NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — The chances of children being diagnosed with leukaemia seem to be related to the number of infections they had in their first year of life, research from the UK suggests.Dr. Eve Roman from the University of York and colleagues identified 455 children with leukaemia diagnosed between 2 and 5 years of age, and found that 425 of them had a type called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia or ALL. According to the researchers’ report in the American Journal of Epidemiology, children diagnosed with ALL had significantly more infectious episodes in infancy than did a comparison group of matched “controls” without leukaemia.

The average number of episodes was 3.6 for children with ALL, versus 3.1 for controls. Overall, 24 percent of ALL children and 18 percent of controls were diagnosed with at least one infection during the first month of life, and by the end of their first year of life this figure had risen to 88 percent of ALL patients and 85 percent among controls. Children with ALL “who had more than one neonatal infectious episode tended to be diagnosed with ALL at a comparatively young age,” the investigators found.

The average age when ALL was diagnosed was 38 months for children with two or more episodes of infection in the newborn period, compared to 45 months for kids with only one episode or none.

Roman and her colleagues conclude that “early infection is positively associated with early-onset ALL”.