Breastfeeding may reduce risk of leukemia in children
Acute leukemia (AL) is the most common type of cancer in children under 15 years old in most populations. The reported world age-standardized incidence rate of leukemia is 46.4 per million per year in children aged 0–14 years, and 28.5 per million in adolescents aged 15–19 years
It has been observed that incidence of Childhood cancers is rising. Many risk factors are unknown except exposure to ionizing radiation, chemicals like benzene, chemotherapy, etc. Acute leukemia (AL) is highly prevalent in children under 15. According to a recent study, breastfeeding protects against ALL risks.
This study, “Early Life Nutrition Factors and Risk of Acute Leukemia in Children: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” by Kintossou et al. and colleagues, is published in Nutrients.
The etiology of ALL remains clear. There is a need to review many preventable risk factors. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to summarize the evidence concerning early life nourishment, administration of neonatal vitamin K and the acute leukemia risk.
Using PubMed and Web of Science, epidemiological studies published up to June 2023 assessing diet-related risk factors for childhood acute leukemia were identified.
The study evaluated 37 case-control studies. Outcomes were acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). The control participants were healthy children and adolescents without the exposure.
The key findings of the study could be summarised as:
- Breastfeeding (yes vs. no) protects against acute lymphoblastic leukemia with an odds ratio of 0.85.
- Breastfeeding reduced ALL risk by 15% (meta-analysis of 9 case-control studies, 6400 cases and 17,642 controls).
- The strongest association was recorded for breastfeeding duration of 7-12 months.
- Breastfeeding reduced AML risk by 17% (meta-analysis of 4 case-control studies).
- There was no relationship between early-life diet/neonatal vitamin K administration and childhood acute leukaemia.
They wrote, “We found the protective role of breastfeeding in childhood acute leukemia and could be recommended as a factor contributing to the prevention of childhood leukemia.”
There need to be more investigations on cost-effective, evidence-based preventive strategies to combat acute leukemia in children.
Further reading:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10489830/
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