"Our findings have not yet been validated in other studies and even if validated Gilbert's Syndrome may not be the direct cause of leukemia or cancer because most cancers are caused by multiple gene interactions."

Researchers at Karmanos, Wayne State and the Detroit Medical Center studied 80 children with ALL at Children's Hospital of Michigan. Out of the 30 children who possessed a specific "fusion" gene, known as ETV6/RUNX1, the frequency of Gilbert's Syndrome was 30 percent. In other words, among the 80 total samples that were tested, nine of 30 children with ETV6/RUNX1-positive ALL had Gilbert's syndrome, in contrast to four of 50 ETV6/RUNX1-negative ALL children.

Dr. Ravindranath said that though Gilbert's Syndrome is common in the general population, the number of children with ETV6/RUNX1-positive childhood ALL is very small.

"We can't give an estimate on the fraction of the Gilbert's Syndrome population that would be susceptible to the development of childhood ALL," he said.

Dr. Ravindranath said the next step for researchers is to expand the study to other institutions and to study a wider sample of blood and bone marrow samples from children with B precursor ALL.  

"No one has studied this in detail before. We want to confirm this finding and we have initiated some collaborative studies," he said. "If we can confirm the link between Gilbert's Syndrome and ALL, this would be a major observation. We would have for the first time a risk factor that can be easily detected."

SOURCE Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute