PURPOSE Although most children with cancer live in low- and middle-income countries, measurements of childhood cancer burden in such countries have been restricted to incidence rates from a few subnational cancer registries and mortality rates from vital statistics. We aimed to provide alternative burden estimates by using nationally representative longitudinal survey-derived mortality rates. ...

TO THE EDITOR: It goes without saying that Levinson and Lurie’s Perspective, “When Most Doctors Are Women: What Lies Ahead?” (1), has created a great deal of interest and, particularly with physicians who are women, a great deal of discussion. My choice of words in the previous sentence, however, really highlights the problem— these women are physicians. We should not attach the label “women ph...

OBJECTIVES To investigate whether childhood cancer is associated with intramuscular administration of vitamin K to newborn infants. DESIGN Routines for administration of vitamin K to infants born after normal deliveries during 1973-89 were obtained from maternity hospitals. Occurrence of cancer up to the end of 1991 was identified by comparing these records with the national cancer registry. ...

PURPOSE Shorter constitutional telomere length has been associated with increased cancer incidence. Furthermore, telomere shortening is observed in response to intensive chemotherapy and/or ionizing radiation exposure. We aimed to determine whether less telomere content was associated with treatment-related second malignant neoplasms (SMN) in childhood cancer survivors. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Us...

Brain tumors are the second most common cancer in children after leukemia and constitute about 20% of all childhood cancers in the United States (1). The annual incidence is approximately 34 pen million children under 15 years of age. The incidence may be rising; the U.S. National Cancer Institute reported an increase in the period 1973-1988 (1). With a 5-year relative survival rate of approxim...

OBJECTIVE Elevated inflammation predicts behavioral symptoms, disease progression, and mortality in patients with breast cancer and breast cancer survivors, although predictors of inflammation remain largely unknown. Adverse experiences in childhood have been associated with higher rates of psychological and physical illness, and elevated inflammatory activity in studies of healthy adults. Howe...

OBJECTIVE Childhood adversity has been linked to greater emotional and physiological sensitivity to stress. Stress has well-documented effects on cellular immunity, including enhanced herpesvirus reactivation. This study assessed whether childhood adversity was associated with the expression of two latent herpesviruses, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) in adults, and whether t...

BACKGROUND The EML4-ALK fusion gene is more frequently found in younger, never smoking patients with lung cancer. Meanwhile, never smokers exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke (SHS) during childhood are diagnosed at a younger age compared with never smoking patients with lung cancer who are not exposed. We, therefore, hypothesized that SHS, which can induce DNA damage, is associated with the EML...

Pediatric oncologists are curing increasing numbers of patients with childhood cancer, and most children diagnosed with a malignancy may now be expected to become long-term survivors. As the number of childhood cancer survivors grows, so too does the need for evidence-based surveillance of the long-term effects of cancer therapy. Long-term effects involving the endocrine system represent a freq...

OBJECTIVES Characterizing the burden of childhood cancer in Wisconsin is the first step to assessing the impact of prevention efforts, identifying especially vulnerable subgroups, and directing etiologic research. To support these goals, population-level data were used to examine trends in childhood cancer incidence among children aged 0-14 years in Wisconsin from 1980 to 1999. METHODS Data f...