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Puffing could expose your kid to leukaemia
Saturday February 11, 2012 09:15:52 AM,
IANS
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Sydney: Smokers
beware. Your heavy puffing around the time of conception greatly
increases the chances of your child developing the most common
form of childhood cancer, known as Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia
(ALL), a study reveals.
The study investigated the link between parental smoking and the
occurrence of ALL in offspring.
"The first step towards the development of leukemia is thought to
occur in utero in a lot of cases," said Elizabeth Milne from
Western Australia's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research,
who led the study.
"So we look at prenatal exposures as it has to be something to do
with what's happening before the baby's born. Tobacco is a known
carcinogen and, in terms of childhood leukemia, there is a
plausible biological pathway whereby paternal smoking could
actually contribute to disease risk in the offspring," said Milne.
In a comprehensive exposure questionnaire distributed nationwide
to 388 families with cases of ALL and 868 control families, the
group asked mothers and fathers to state where they lived, their
occupation and how many cigarettes they smoked for every year of
their life from the time they were 15, according to a university
statement.
"Using this information and knowing the year the child was born,
we were then able to look at smoking levels around the time of
conception," Milne said.
"The results indicated that the risk of ALL, when compared with
dad's who did not smoke during the year of conception, increased
by 35 percent when fathers smoked more than 15 cigarettes a day
around the time conception," said Milne.
The effect was only apparent amongst heavier smokers, with fathers
who smoked less than 15 cigarettes, as well as former heavy
smokers, not showing any increased risk.
Based on evidence from lab studies of sperm, the group believe
that paternal smoking may cause adverse changes in sperm DNA
structure that may then go on to effect the development of the
baby.
"Oxidative damage to the DNA is the main type of damage seen as a
result of smoking in sperm," added Milne.
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