Daycare Attendance Correlates with Lower Rate of Leukemia
Children may be reducing their risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common type of leukemia, by almost 30 percent simply by attending daycare, scientists said on Tuesday.
Researchers said that playgroups could help children by introducing them to certain infections at an early age, although they admitted that their review did not identify how early social contact prevents against infections.
The group of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley presented their findings during a leukemia conference in London.
Researchers looked at 14 studies of almost 20,000 children. Of them, 6,000 developed ALL.
"What we found was for across all the studies there was a level of protection in 12 of them and no protection seen in two," said Patricia Buffler, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
"No study showed an increased risk. They either showed protection or no effect."
The review involved interviewing parents who were asked about their children’s day care and playgroup participation.
Answers varied when it came to the timing, duration and extent of social interaction with other children, researchers said.
Their review showed children who started daycare at age 1 or 2 had the most immunity.
"This is just more evidence pointing to the role that some type of infection early in life could stimulate the immune system," said Buffler, who led the research.
Leukemia is the most common cancer found in children in the industrialized world, affecting about one in 2,000. ALL usually occurs in children from age two to five. It affects more than 80 percent of reported cases of leukemia.
"These findings are important because this is the first time the results of all the relevant studies have been put together and it clearly shows that there is an effect here,” said Edward Copisarow, of the charity Children with Leukaemia.
"This is the kind of research that brings us a step closer to understanding the causes of this complex disease and how we can prevent it."
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