AGE-STANDARDIZED INCIDENCE RATES FOR LEUKEMIA ASSOCIATED WITH CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES IN 68 COUNTRIES, AN ECOLOGICAL STUDY

Consanguineous marriage which defines as a union between biologically related persons has a variety of known deleterious correlations with factors that affect public health within human populations. To investigate the association between mean of inbreeding coefficient (a) and incidence of leukemia, the present ecological study on 67 countries was carried out. Statistical analysis showed that the age-standardized incidence rate of leukemia positively correlated with log10GNI per capita (r=0.693, df=65, P0.05). The present finding indicating that the age-standardized for incidence rate of leukemia is lower in countries with high prevalence of consanguineous marriages