The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7178 p839-846
15 December 2001

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Folate use in pregnancy lowers risk of leukaemia

Folic acid supplementation in pregnancy reduces the risk of the child developing common acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), a new study suggests.

Dr Judith Thompson, Cancer Foundation of Western Australia, West Perth, and colleagues analysed data for 83 children aged between 0 and 14 years who had been treated for ALL between 1984 and 1992, and for 166 matched controls.

The researchers say that the use of iron or folic acid supplements during pregnancy by the child's mother showed a "strong and highly significant" inverse association with the risk of ALL (odds ratio 0.37 [95 per cent confidence interval, 0.21 to 0.65]). The strength of the association was not affected by when the folic acid was first taken or for how long it was taken.

The use of iron alone during pregnancy had only a weakly protective effect, reducing the risk of ALL by 25 per cent.

The study is published in The Lancet (2001;358:1935).

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