Living on a farm, contact with farm animals and pets, and childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia: pooled and meta‐analyses from the Childhood Leukemia International Consortium
The associations between childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and several factors related to early stimulation of the immune system, that is, farm residence and regular contacts with farm animals (livestock, poultry) or pets in early childhood, were investigated using data from 13 case-control studies participating in the Childhood Leukemia International Consortium. The sample included 7847 ALL cases and 11,667 controls aged 1-14 years. In all studies, the data were obtained from case and control parents using standardized questionnaires. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated by unconditional logistic regression adjusted for age, sex, study, maternal education, and maternal age. Contact with livestock in the first year of life was inversely associated with ALL (OR = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.50, 0.85). Inverse associations were also observed for contact with dogs (OR = 0.92, 95% CI: 0.86, 0.99) and cats (OR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.80, 0.94) in the first year of life. There was no evidence of a significant association with farm residence in the first year of life. The findings of these large pooled and meta-analyses add additional evidence to the hypothesis that regular contact with animals in early childhood is inversely associated with childhood ALL occurrence which is consistent with Greaves' delayed infection hypothesis.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 29 December 2020.
All research outputs
#4,025,281
of 32,041,085 outputs
Outputs from Cancer Medicine
#462
of 4,653 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#59,421
of 339,024 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cancer Medicine
#14
of 100 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,041,085 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,653 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 339,024 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 100 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
