Breastfeeding may reduce risk of leukemia in children

Written By : Aditi |Medically Reviewed By : Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli Published On 2023-09-16T09:45:40+05:30 | Updated On 21 Sept 2023 5:43 PM IST

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.

BDS, MDS in Periodontics and Implantology

Dr. Aditi Yadav is a BDS, MDS in Periodontics and Implantology. She has a clinical experience of 5 years as a laser dental surgeon. She also has a Diploma in clinical research and pharmacovigilance and is a Certified data scientist. She is currently working as a content developer in e-health services. Dr. Yadav has a keen interest in Medical Journalism and is actively involved in Medical Research writing.

Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli

Dr Kamal Kant Kohli-MBBS, DTCD- a chest specialist with more than 30 years of practice and a flair for writing clinical articles, Dr Kamal Kant Kohli joined Medical Dialogues as a Chief Editor of Medical News. Besides writing articles, as an editor, he proofreads and verifies all the medical content published on Medical Dialogues including those coming from journals, studies,medical conferences,guidelines etc. Email: drkohli@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751