Month of birth in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia]

An association between date of birth influenced by certain environmental factors (such as virus infections) and malignant diseases has been suggested in some previous papers.The authors analyzed the birth dates of 814 children, 0-18 years of age, in whom acute lymphoblastic leukemia was diagnosed in the period between the 1st of January 1988 and 31st of December 2000.No association between month of birth and manifestation of leukemia in Hungarian children could be established.The results suggest that this approach was not capable of detecting any obvious prenatal environmental factors, including virus endemics, that could have influenced the appearance of leukemia.