Uc Science Today

Mothers who smoke during pregnancy and after birth put their children at increased risk of a common type of childhood cancer. This, according to a new University of California, San Francisco study. Adam de Smith says their work is the first to find an association between maternal smoking and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. “In the mothers who are exposed to tobacco smoke, there was a higher rate of deletion in the fetal cells that was likely caused by a particular mechanism. It is an innate mechanism in our immune system, which functions to create antibodies to particularly create diversity in our antibodies. And we think when this mechanism goes wrong, or goes into overdrive and has abnormal effects, it can increase the risk of causing deletions in genes around across the genome.” Deletions are genetic mutations that can lead to cancer and other diseases. “We think that the tobacco smoke maybe increasing the abnormal effects of this immune mechanism, that lead to increased deletions. And this maybe thro