title: Birth weight and childhood cancer.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Leukemia incidence in childhood has been shown to increase with birth weight. The purpose of this paper is to study whether the incidence of other childhood cancers also increases with birth weight.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Norwegian Medical Birth Registry was linked to the Norwegian Cancer Registry. The data consisted of 1.65 million children, of whom 3252 had a cancer diagnosis before age 16 years. The diagnoses were divided into 1010 leukemia cases, 870 cancer cases of the central nervous system (CNS), and 1370 remaining cancers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The increase in hazard rate for all cancers with a 1 kg increase in birth weight was 1.23 (95% confidence interval = 1.14-1.32) after adjustment. For leukemia the increase was 1.29 (1.14-1.47), for CNS cancers 1.07 (0.93-1.23), and for the remaining cancer diagnoses 1.29 (1.16-1.40).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There seems to be a general relationship between heavier birth weight and cancer incidence in childhood.
authors.affiliation: Division of Epidemiology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway. osamuels@math.uio.no
authors.forename: Sven Ove
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Samuelsen
authors.forename: Leiv S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Bakketeig
authors.forename: Steinar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tretli
authors.forename: Tom B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Johannesen
authors.forename: Per
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Magnus
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001724:Birth Weight; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009664:Norway / Q000453:epidemiology; D012042:Registries; D018570:Risk Assessment