ISTOCK, FATCAMERAAn analysis of more than 30 years of research has revealed the underlying cause of the most common form of leukemia in children. Research compiled in Nature Reviews Cancer on May 21 suggests that acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) occurs by a two-step process—first, a mutation occurs in the fetus and a second mutation, later in life and triggered by infection, spurs the cancer to develop.
“The most important implication is that most cases of childhood leukemia are likely to be preventable,” Melvyn Greaves, a cancer biologist at the Institute of Cancer Research in the U.K. and the author of the paper, says in a statement.
Only 1 percent of children born with an ALL-related mutation go on to have the disease. The ones who do have had little experience with common infections such as the flu in their formative years, according to Greaves. This lack of immune priming predisposes them to a genetic change caused by a later infection and, ultimately, causes the disease, Greaves proposes in his paper.
Greaves collated research from the fields of genetics, cell biology, immunology, and epidemiology. Further, experiments in mice support his conclusions. Mice ...
