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High risks of familial chronic lymphatic leukemia for specific relatives: signposts for genetic discovery?

Leukemia volume 26, pages 2419–2421 (2012)Cite this article

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Chronic lymphatic leukemia (CLL) presents a very high familial aggregation,1, 2 with a relative risk for first-degree relatives of CLL patients close to 8. In order to help understand the possible genetic mechanism for CLL inheritance, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the concordance in adult family members for CLL, focusing on the type of familial relationship and sex. Taking advantage of a large population-based database linked to information on family relationships, we examined how the type of kinship and sex affect the familial risk of adult CLL. We identified CLL cases diagnosed in Sweden over a period of almost 50 years, and compared the risk of CLL in their first-degree relatives to the risk in the first-degree relatives of matched individuals (controls) who were free of cancer.

The ‘Multi-Generation Register’ maintained by Statistics Sweden3 records the identities of the biological parents of all children born in Sweden since 1932 (and alive in 1960). We obtained a copy of this database containing a total of 11 million individuals. Using the unique national registration number, these individuals were linked to the Swedish Cancer Register to identify all first primary malignancies diagnosed between 1958 (the start-up date of the register) and 2007. CLL was identified using the International Classification of Diseases, Seventh Revision (ICD7 code 204.1).

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Acknowledgements

Paola Rebora was supported by a studentship from FIRC (Fondazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro). This work was supported by the Swedish Cancer Society (Cancerfonden Contract No. 030635 and 5128-B07-01PAF) and by the Swedish Research Council (SIMSAM Grant No. 80748301).

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  1. Department of Clinical Medicine and Prevention, Center of Biostatistics for Clinical Epidemiology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Monza, Italy

    P Rebora & M G Valsecchi

  2. Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    M Lee, K Czene & M Reilly

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  1. P Rebora
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Correspondence to M Reilly.

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Rebora, P., Lee, M., Czene, K. et al. High risks of familial chronic lymphatic leukemia for specific relatives: signposts for genetic discovery?. Leukemia 26, 2419–2421 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2012.103

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