Friday NOv 29, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- News reports are everywhere saying an Amish girl with leukemia was forced to receive experimental chemotherapy while the girl and her family refused to take it.  And now the girl and her family are hiding in another country to receive alternative treatments.

How to avoid childhood leukemia?  The most important risk factor is the medical radiation, which can increase the risk of leukemia in both children and adults. The association between medical radiation and elevated risk of leukemia has been well established. 

How about a person's diet?

Like anything else, the risk of leukemia has something to do with the diet used in childhood.  

A new study  recently published in Cancer Causes & Control suggests that higher consumption of added lipids was correlated with an increased risk of childhood leukemia.  Added lipids or added fat refers to fat that is not originally found in a food.

The study led by Andreas-Antonios Diamantaras and colleagues in Greece compared 139 children aged 5 to 14 years who were diagnosed with leukemia with controls who did not have the disease for their consumption of foods.

The study found that added lipids increased risk of childhood leukemia while consumption of milk and dairy products was associated with reduced risk for the disease.

In addition, high protein intake was associated with reduced childhood leukemia risk.

The researchers concluded "Consumption of milk and dairy products in the first year of life may protect against childhood leukemia possibly through vitamin D actions, while added lipids may increase the risk through various mechanisms. These results offer a holistic evaluation of children’s nutrition and suggest that dietary habits in the early years of life may contribute to the prevention of childhood leukemia."

Early research shows that vitamin D helps fight leukemia.

A study recently released in PLoS One shows that taking a high dose of vitamin D can actually extend the survival of patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

According to the study report by Etienne Paubelle and colleagues, patients aged 65 or older who were diagnosed with myeloid leukemia and were treated with demethylating agents.  But the disease could not be cured or improved by the medications.

The researchers knew from in vitro experiments that the iron chelator Deferasirox can synergize with vitamin D to promote monocyte differentiation in primary acute myeloid leukemia cells and they recommended patients be treated with this novel therapy consisting of 1 to 2 g of deferasirox per day adnd 100,000 IU of 25-hydroxycholecalciferol per week.

The median survival of patients treated with deferasirox/vitamin D combination was 10.4 months compared with 4 months for patients who did not receive the novel treatment.   It was also found that the only factor that may contribute to the extended survival is the increased serum vitamin D levels.

Some news outlets reported that the Amish girl was treated with high doses of vitamin C, B17,  oxygen therapy, and defixication therapy among other things.  The girl was cited as saying she was fine with everything.  She were treated with chemotherapy for some time, but she could not tolerate the treatment and begged her patients to stop using chemotherapy on her, that is why, they fled to another country to avoid chemotherapy.  (David Liu, PHD)