Women who eat a diet rich in vegetables, fruit and protein before pregnancy may lower the risk of having a child who develops leukaemia, Britain’s biggest child killer disease, suggests recent US research."This is the first time researchers have conducted a systematic survey of a woman’s diet and linked it to the risk of childhood leukaemia,” said Dr. Kenneth Olden, director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the body that funded the study. Researchers at the University of California, Berkley compared 138 women who each had a child diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) with a control group of 138 women whose children did not have cancer. The children of all the women in the study were matched by sex, age, race, and county of residence at birth. After comparing the women’s diets in the 12 months prior to pregnancy, researchers found that the higher the intake of vegetables, fruit and protein-rich foods, the lower the risk of having a child with leukaemia.
