- Children should not be allowed to sleep with the light
on because it inhibits the production of a hormone that protects them from
cancer, a scientist said yesterday.
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- Increased exposure to unnatural night-time light and
the resultant reduced capacity to produce melatonin may be one of the reasons
for the steady rise in childhood leukaemia over the past century.
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- Babies up to the age of four or five months are believed
to be particularly vulnerable because their bodies do not produce enough
melatonin.
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- Prof Russel Reiter, of the University of Texas, urged
parents to use low-intensity lighting if their children have to get up
during the night.
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- Previous research suggests that night workers are more
at risk of developing breast and other cancers. Blind people and those
who live in the Arctic Circle often have higher melatonin levels and have
lower cancer rates.
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- Prof Reiter, who presented a paper to a childhood leukaemia
conference in London, said: "Parents should be prudent about the use
of light at night. Once children have gone to bed they should not be permitted
to use a light without good reason."
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- The number of children under five diagnosed with leukaemia
has increased by 50 per cent in the past 40 years, statistics published
this week showed.
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- Researchers also suggested that there had been a seven-fold
increase in the disease in the same age group during the 20th century,
although these data are less reliable because of changes to diagnosis and
counting methods.
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- About 500 children under the age of 15 are diagnosed
with leukaemia - cancer of the blood - in Britain every year and around
100 die of it.
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- Prof Reiter said: "At present we have a lot of indirect
evidence but we do not have the proof. Our task is to see if we can find
that proof."
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- Russell Foster, a molecular neuroscientist at Imperial
College London, said: "We do not know whether abnormal light exposure
is generating this higher incidence of childhood leukaemia but in view
of what we know about other forms of cancer this is not unreasonable."
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- The Children with Leukaemia charity, which organised
the conference, has launched a £1 million appeal fund for research
aimed at furthering the understanding of the causes of the disease.
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