What is LEAF?
Please note: recruitment for LEAF is now closed.
LEAF is a family case-control study of the risk factors for follicular lymphoma in both Victoria and NSW. The LEAF study is led by A/Prof Claire Vajdic from the University of NSW.
Many epidemiological studies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) have been conducted, but the cause of most cases has been poorly understood. There's some evidence that risk factors vary for different NHL subtypes. Follicular lymphoma (FL) is the second most common NHL subtype in Caucasian populations.
FLs and other NHL subtypes are characterised by a genetic abnormality known as a translocation, which is a rearrangement of parts of the chromosome. This is believed to lead to an inhibition of programmed cell death (apoptosis) and prolonged survival and expansion of the affected B cells.
Individual NHL case-control and cohort studies have had insufficient FL case numbers to reliably examine risk. Recently, large-scale pooled analyses by NHL subtype have been performed using both traditional population and hospital-based case-control study data.
Aims
- To recruit a population-based sample of 1,200 FL cases and 1,200 family controls from NSW and Victoria.
- To examine the relationship between lifestyle and environmental exposures, common genetic variants and risk of FL and cytogenetically defined FL subgroups.
- To establish a world-class biobank of DNA, plasma and tissue to provide data and biospecimens for future international pooled analyses of gene-environment interaction in regard to both FL risk and survival.