Effects of the Chornobyl Accident on Thyroid Cancer and Leukemia & Related Diseases (NO1-CP-21178)

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Investigator: Lydia Zablotska, MD, MPA, PhD
Sponsor: Columbia University

Location(s): Ukraine

Description

The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant remains the most serious nuclear accident in history, and excess thyroid cancers, particularly among those exposed to releases of iodine-131 remain the best-documented sequelae. Failure to take dose-measurement error into account can lead to bias in assessments of dose-response slope. Although risks in the Ukrainian-US thyroid screening study have been previously evaluated, errors in dose assessments have not been addressed hitherto. Dose-response patterns were examined in a thyroid screening prevalence cohort of 13,127 persons aged <18 at the time of the accident who were resident in the most radioactively contaminated regions of Ukraine.