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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
medicine
Temporal association between childhood leukaemia and population growth in Swiss municipalities
European Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 31, No. 8, Year 2016
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Description
The population mixing hypothesis proposes that childhood leukaemia (CL) might be a rare complication of a yet unidentified subclinical infection. Large population influxes into previously isolated rural areas may foster localised epidemics of the postulated infection causing a subsequent increase of CL. While marked population growth after a period of stability was central to the formulation of the hypothesis and to the early studies on population mixing, there is a lack of objective criteria to define such growth patterns. We aimed to determine whether periods of marked population growth coincided with increases in the risk of CL in Swiss municipalities. We identified incident cases of CL aged 0–15 years for the period 1985–2010 from the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry. Annual data on population counts in Swiss municipalities were obtained for 1980–2010. As exposures, we defined (1) cumulative population growth during a 5-year moving time window centred on each year (1985–2010) and (2) periods of ‘take-off growth’ identified by segmented linear regression. We compared CL incidence across exposure categories using Poisson regression and tested for effect modification by degree of urbanisation. Our study included 1500 incident cases and 2561 municipalities. The incident rate ratio (IRR) comparing the highest to the lowest quintile of 5-year population growth was 1.18 (95 % CI 0.96, 1.46) in all municipalities and 1.33 (95 % CI 0.93, 1.92) in rural municipalities (p value interaction 0.36). In municipalities with take-off growth, the IRR comparing the take-off period (>6 % annual population growth) with the initial period of low or negative growth (<2 %) was 2.07 (95 % CI 0.95, 4.51) overall and 2.99 (1.11, 8.05) in rural areas (p interaction 0.52). Our study provides further support for the population mixing hypothesis and underlines the need to distinguish take-off growth from other growth patterns in future research. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
Authors & Co-Authors
Lupatsch, Judith Eva
Switzerland, Bern
University of Bern
Zwahlen, Marcel
Switzerland, Bern
University of Bern
Niggli, F. K.
Switzerland, Zurich
Kinderspital Zürich
Ammann, Roland A.
Switzerland, Bern
University of Bern
Kuehni, Claudia E.
Switzerland, Bern
University of Bern
Daniel Spycher, Ben Daniel
Switzerland, Bern
University of Bern
Ansari, Marc
Unknown Affiliation
Beck-Popovic, Maja
Unknown Affiliation
Greiner, Jeannette
Unknown Affiliation
Egger, Matthias
Unknown Affiliation
Spoerri, Adrian
Unknown Affiliation
Puhan, Milo Alan
Unknown Affiliation
Faeh, David
Unknown Affiliation
Künzli, Nino
Unknown Affiliation
Paccaud, Fred Michel
Unknown Affiliation
Statistics
Citations: 1
Authors: 15
Affiliations: 2
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1007/s10654-016-0162-6
ISSN:
03932990
Research Areas
Cancer
Maternal And Child Health
Study Design
Cross Sectional Study
Cohort Study