No increase in leukemia in Chernobyl children

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Friday December 24 10:40 PM ET 

No increase in leukemia in Chernobyl children  

NEW YORK, Dec 24 (Reuters Health) -- There has been no increase in 
leukemia among children who were exposed to radiation from the 
Chernobyl nuclear plant after its reactor exploded in 1986, according 
to researchers.  

``Eleven years after, there is no (blood-related) problem in exposed 
kids,'' study lead author Dr. Mohammed Zarrabi told Reuters Health. 
Zarrabi, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, 
presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Society 
of Hematology, held earlier this month in New Orleans.  

Zarrabi's team studied 244 children who were either fetuses or up to 
15 months old at the time of the nuclear accident. At the time of the 
disaster, all of the children were quickly evacuated from Chernobyl 
to Kiev, Ukraine, 30 kilometers from the disaster site.  

The researchers compared the blood characteristics of these radiation-
exposed children with those of 229 nonexposed Kiev children matched 
for sex and age.  

They discovered ``no hematological (blood) abnormalities in exposed 
children compared to the (unexposed) group.''  

Zarrabi said he and his team were surprised by the study results. 
``Based on the data from the atomic explosions in Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki, one expected to see more leukemia, namely chronic 
myelogenous leukemia.''  

He said his team will continue to monitor these children, since it 
took researchers 40 years to see any increase in leukemia in Japan. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
ICN Biomedicals, Inc.				E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           
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Personal Website:  http://www.geocities.com/scperle
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com

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