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Birth order and risk of childhood cancer in the Danish birth cohort of 1973–2010

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Abstract

Purpose

Many studies have investigated the possible association between birth order and risk of childhood cancer, although the evidence to date has been inconsistent. Birth order has been used as a marker for various in utero or childhood exposures and is relatively straightforward to assess.

Methods

Data were obtained on all children born in Denmark between 1973 and 2010, involving almost 2.5 million births and about 5,700 newly diagnosed childhood cancers before the age of 20 years. Data were analyzed using Poisson regression models.

Results

We failed to observe associations between birth order and risk of any childhood cancer subtype, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia; all rate ratios were close to one. Further analyses stratified by birth cohort (those born between 1973 and 1990, and those born between 1991 and 2010) also failed to show any associations. Considering stillbirths and/or controlling for birth weight and parental age in the analyses had no effect on the results. Analyses by years of birth (those born between 1973 and 1990, and those born between 1991 and 2010) did not show any changes in the overall pattern of no association.

Conclusions

In this large cohort of all children born in Denmark over an almost 40-year period, we did not observe an association between birth order and the risk of childhood cancer.

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Abbreviations

ALL:

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia

AML:

Acute myeloblastic leukemia

CNS:

Central nervous system

RR:

Rate ratio

CI:

95 % Confidence interval

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Acknowledgments

No specific funding was obtained for this study. Costs for data retrieval were covered by the collaboration agreement between the IARC and the Danish Cancer  Society Research Center.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Environment and Radiation, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), 150 Cours Albert Thomas, 69372, Lyon, France

    Joachim Schüz, Friederike Erdmann, Gilles Ferro & Tracy Lightfoot

  2. Department of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Biomathematics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    George Luta

  3. Survivorship Unit, Childhood Cancer Survivorship Research Group, Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Andrea Bautz & Jeanette Falck Winther

  4. Survivorship Unit, Social Inequality in Survivorship Group, Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Sofie Bay Simony & Susanne Oksbjerg Dalton

  5. Epidemiology and Cancer Statistics Group, Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York, UK

    Tracy Lightfoot

Authors
  1. Joachim Schüz
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  3. Friederike Erdmann
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  4. Gilles Ferro
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  8. Tracy Lightfoot
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  9. Jeanette Falck Winther
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joachim Schüz.

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Conflict of interest

None of the authors declared any conflict of interest.

Human and animal rights

The study did not involve personal contact with human subjects and no animals. The study is based on record linkage of various registers in Denmark and was therefore approved by “Datatilsynet” (the Danish Data Protection Board). No informed consent from individuals was required.

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Schüz, J., Luta, G., Erdmann, F. et al. Birth order and risk of childhood cancer in the Danish birth cohort of 1973–2010. Cancer Causes Control 26, 1575–1582 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-015-0651-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-015-0651-z

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