I learned in my reading last night that children with Down Syndrome are at a greater risk of developing leukemia than the rest of the population. The risk is ~ 20-fold greater. I had no idea.
The paper I was reading was looking for genes on chromosome 21 that might play a role in leukemia susceptibility. Children with Down Syndrome have trisonomy 21 - three copies of chromosome 21. Typically, a human should only have two copies of this chromosome.
Because the paper is still unpublished, I can't report it here (yet), but here's a link to a more general overview about this topic. Granted, it's from 1987, but it's still informative. I also gave a link to a 2008 paper from The Lancet that discusses new breakthroughs in research on this topic.
LINK: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2955886 (1987 paper)
LINK: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=bercovich%20the%20lancet%202008 (2008 paper)
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