Re: Chernobyl gave Greek children leukemia - study (fwd)

["Bruce A. Busby" <bbusby@umich.edu>]

Hi All,

here is a news lead you might be reading soon, about a Nature article. 

-Bruce Busby

	 LONDON (Reuter) - Greek children who were exposed to  
radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster 
while still in their mothers' wombs were twice as likely to 
develop leukemia, researchers reported Wednesday. 
	 Dimitrios Trichopolous of the Harvard Center for Cancer  
Prevention and colleagues said they had found clear evidence 
that the explosion could have caused one form of the common 
childhood cancer, which makes up a third of all malignant 
cancers in children. 
	 ``Infants exposed in utero to ionizing radiation from the  
Chernobyl accident had 2.6 times the incidence of leukemia 
compared to unexposed children,'' they wrote in the science 
journal Nature. 
	 ``Those born to mothers residing in regions with high  
radioactive fallout were at higher risk of developing infant 
leukemia.'' 
	 They checked every case of childhood leukemia reported in  
Greece against measurements of the fallout from the disaster 
which, because of weather conditions, hit Greece hard. 
	 They found no difference in cancer rates among children who  
were a year to four years old at the time of the accident. 
	 They noted that mutations to a gene known as 11q23 were  
linked with infant leukemia, and studies had shown such 
mutations were likely to arise during pregnancy. They thought it 
likely that radiation could cause the mutations, although they 
did not check the children for the genetic mutation. 
	 ``We provide evidence that infant leukemia may be caused by  
very low level intrauterine exposure to ionising radiation (and) 
that fallout from the Chernobyl explosion may have increased the 
incidence of infant leukemia among Greek children exposed in 
utero, perhaps by as much as two to three fold,'' they 
concluded. 
	 But low-level radiation before conception seemed to have no  
effect on leukemia risk -- in other words, it did not seem to 
affect the mothers' eggs or the fathers' sperm. 
	 Epidemiologists Sarah Darby of the Imperial Cancer Research  
Fund in Britain and Eve Roman of the Leukemia Research Fund said 
the study did not necessarily show that Chernobyl radiation 
caused leukemia. 
	 ``The question arises as to whether those living in high  
radioactivity areas would actually have received the highest 
doses, since the majority of Chernobyl exposure came from 
ingestion of contaminated foodstuff,'' they wrote in a 
commentary on the study. 
	 Rates of thyroid cancer, especially among children, rose  
100-fold in Belarus after the April, 1986 Chernobyl accident 
across the border in Ukraine spewed a radioactive cloud.