The considerable burden of childhood cancer, in terms of both morbidity and mortality, has generated extensive aetiological research over recent decades. Despite these efforts, apart from ionizing radiation, the causes of childhood leukaemia and other malignancies remain largely unexplained (Doll, 1989). The identification of risk factors has frequently focused on the vulnerable period of intrauterine growth and development, birth and neonatal life. The population-based Scottish case control study of childhood leukaemia and cancer has investigated potential risk factors occurring in the prenatal and perinatal period based on data abstracted from the hospital records of both mothers and neonates. A key aspect was to test prior hypotheses as well as identify associations for separate diagnostic subgroups and search for patterns of risk within and across distinct subsets of childhood malignancy. SUBJECTS AND METHODSThe cases studied were children (0-14 years) diagnosed with leukaemia or another malignancy during 1991-1994 while living in Scotland. The childhood population of Scotland at the 1991 census was 959 268. Pathological confirmation of diagnosis was required and cross-checks with the Scottish Cancer Registry and the UK National Register of Childhood Cancers (Stiller, 1995) optimized completeness of case ascertainment. Population-based controls matched on age (to within one calendar month), sex and health board area of residence were randomly selected from all eligible children registered for primary care. This sampling frame is considered appropriate representation of the general population in this age group (Roberts et al, 1995). An optimum two controls per case were selected and a full description of the study methodology is published elsewhere (McKinney et al, 1995). Scotland is a participating centre in the UK Children's Cancer Study (UKCCS).The study was approved by the Local Research Ethics Committees of the 15 Health Boards in Scotland. Consultant clinicians or general practitioners gave consent to approach and interview mothers who gave their signed permission for information to be abstracted from their medical notes. In Scotland, 76 hospitals and maternity units gave access to medical records relating to births from 1976 to 1994. Records for births occurring in England and Wales (3.4%) were obtained by post.Information from obstetric, delivery and neonatal records was recorded by two trained abstractors onto a specifically designed and highly structured standard form which has been validated in a previous study (Roman et al, 1997). Consistency and data quality were maximized through a programme of continual monitoring, coding checks and duplicate abstractions by the senior midwife abstractor (EF).Demographic details of the mother were collected at interview. Each child was assigned a deprivation score (five categories representing quintiles of the Scottish population) according to Carstairs and Morris (1991) from the home address at the time of birth and its validated postcode. This was based on 19...

Objective: To test the hypothesis of an association between neonatal intramuscular vitamin K and childhood leukaemia and other cancers. Design: Population based case-control study with data abstracted from hospital records. Setting: Scotland.

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