Is hepatitis B vaccination associated with a risk for leukaemia?
No. Five studies have reviewed the risk of leukaemia following hepatitis B vaccination. The only suggestion of a potential association comes from the preliminary results from the Northern California Childhood Leukemia Study by Xiaomei Ma, Monique Does, Patricia A. Buffler, John K. Wiencke. The authors presented a poster at American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, San Francisco, April 9, 2002. This study reports an epidemiological association between receipt of hepatitis B vaccine and childhood leukaemia in a group of 334 children in northern California. This is the first study to ever report such an association. In their presentation, the authors hypothesize that thiomersal, a mercury-containing preservative may be the cause of the association. However, there is some evidence suggesting that hepatitis B vaccination does not cause childhood leukaemia. During the period 1991 to 1998, when the rate of hepatitis B vaccination in American 2-year-olds was climbing from zero t
