West Australian families are being asked to play a vital role in a major new national study to unravel the causes of childhood leukaemia.
Study leader Professor Bruce Armstrong said the research will investigate diet, exposure to some chemicals and genetic factors.
"Previous research has thrown up some clues, but the causes of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) are largely unknown," he said.
"We do know that there is rarely a simple cause to a disease such as this and our study will be the first to look at all these factors together."
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is the most common malignancy in children and affects 1 in 2000 children.
"While the study will involve families of children with leukaemia, it is just as important that we have a big group of families with healthy children to act as a comparison.
"This project is quite different in that it will rely on the involvement of many people who aren't directly affected by this devastating disease."
Over the coming weeks, hundreds of homes will be phoned at random to find families with healthy children aged under 15 who are willing to participate in the research.
Parents in the comparison group will be asked to fill in questionnaires about jobs they have done, their diet and exposure to particular chemicals. Parents and children will be asked for painless swabs of the inside of the cheek so that researchers can measure genetic factors that affect the way food and chemicals are dealt with (metabolised) in the body.
"This is not a case where we want people to actively volunteer for this research. For our study to be statistically sound, we need to make sure that we have a true random sample and that is best achieved by a telephone campaign," Professor Armstrong said.
"What we want to ensure is that families are aware of the importance of this research before they get that phone call - that way we hope they will be more likely to give of their time."
The study is being funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council. It is headquartered at Perth's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and run in collaboration with children's hospitals and research centres across Australia.