Friday December 24 10:40 PM ET

No increase in leukemia in Chernobyl children

NEW YORK, Dec 24 (Reuters Health) -- There has
been no increase in leukemia among children who
were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl
nuclear plant after its reactor exploded in 1986,
according to researchers.

``Eleven years after, there is no (blood-related)
problem in exposed kids,'' study lead author Dr.
Mohammed Zarrabi told Reuters Health. Zarrabi, of
the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
presented the findings at the annual meeting of
the American Society of Hematology, held earlier
this month in New Orleans.

Zarrabi's team studied 244 children who were
either fetuses or up to 15 months old at the time
of the nuclear accident. At the time of the
disaster, all of the children were quickly
evacuated from Chernobyl to Kiev, Ukraine, 30
kilometers from the disaster site.

The researchers compared the blood
characteristics of these radiation-exposed
children with those of 229 nonexposed Kiev
children matched for sex and age.

They discovered ``no hematological (blood)
abnormalities in exposed children compared to the
(unexposed) group.''

Zarrabi said he and his team were surprised by
the study results. ``Based on the data from the
atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one
expected to see more leukemia, namely chronic
myelogenous leukemia.''

He said his team will continue to monitor these
children, since it took researchers 40 years to
see any increase in leukemia in Japan.

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