Elsevier

Leukemia Research

Volume 28, Issue 9, September 2004, Pages 927-931
Leukemia Research

Alcohol consumption and risk of adult-onset acute myeloid leukemia: results from a Los Angeles County case-control study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leukres.2004.01.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Few studies have examined the role of alcohol consumption in risk of adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Two previous case-control studies resulted in inconsistent findings. We report data from a Los Angeles County population-based case-control study in which 164 matched case-control pairs were asked about lifetime history of alcohol consumption and 136 cases were subtyped according to the French-American-British (FAB) criteria. Estimated categorical odds ratios (OR) adjusted for smoking and education were suggestive of a possible protective effect but trend tests were non-significant. Analyses by FAB subtype did not reveal subtype-specific associations but generally suffered from lack of power. Larger studies are needed to more thoroughly investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and AML risk.

Introduction

In 1977, the Third National Cancer Survey was the first study to report on the effects of alcohol consumption for leukemia subtypes and suggested a positive but weak association with chronic lymphoid, chronic myeloid, and acute myeloid leukemia [1]. Since then, several studies have analyzed the relationship between alcohol intake and adult leukemia and between maternal alcohol consumption and childhood leukemia. Findings have been generally inconsistent, but interpreting these studies as a group is problematic since leukemia subtypes were not often distinguished. Two case-control studies have specifically reported on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in adults. One found no evidence of a relationship between alcohol consumption and AML risk [2] and the other found elevated odds ratios (OR) associated with alcohol but no dose-response [3].

We report on an analysis of alcohol consumption and AML risk in a subset of a large, population-based case-control study conducted in Los Angeles County. Analyses were done for all cases combined as well as for individual French-American-British (FAB) subtypes of AML.

Section snippets

Study population

The study has been described in detail elsewhere [4]. Briefly, the study included eligible cases of adult-onset AML (ICDO codes 9861, 9864, 9866, 9867, and 9891) diagnosed in Los Angeles County from January 1987 through June 1994. Proxy respondents (usually the spouse) were used for cases who could not be interviewed. Neighborhood controls were matched by birthyear (±5 years), ethnicity (African-American or white, including Hispanic), and sex according to a previously established protocol [5].

Results

Seven hundred twenty-five cases diagnosed from January 1987 through June 1994 who met the age, race and residence criteria were identified. Of these, 188 (26%) were deceased or too ill for interview, 31 (4%) were not contacted as advised by their physicians, and 20 (3%) were lost to followup. Therefore, 67% (486/725) of eligible cases were invited to participate in the study. Since 74 (13%) invited cases refused to participate, the study ultimately included 412 cases (57% (412/726) of those

Discussion

Our findings were consistent with those of the case-control study of males in Iowa and Minnesota conducted by Brown et al. [2]. As in that study, we observed decreased but non-significant ORs for alcohol consumption and risk of AML with an upper 95% confidence limit of 1.6 for the highest exposure category. The confidence intervals we observed did not include the elevated ORs reported by Wakabayashi et al. [3], who failed to show dose-response.

Alcohol is associated with reduced risk of coronary

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NIH grant CA17054 and by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant 5 P30 ES07048-06. Cases were identified by the Cancer Surveillance Program with support from SEER contract NO1-CN-25403 of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services and contract 050 (C-J)-8709 from the State of California Department of Health Services. We thank Maria Paul, Kristina

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