Family interviews, the major component of a massive epidemiological study of children with cancer, are expected to be finished by late September or early October, a state health official said.
Michael Berry, a research scientist and member of the study management team at the state Department of Health and Senior Services, said that all the families of children with cancer have been interviewed, although additional information is needed from one family.
When the study began, researchers expected to interview 42 families of children who had been diagnosed with brain and central nervous system cancers or leukemia. The children had to be diagnosed while living in Dover Township from 1979 to 1996.
But Berry said additional research has eliminated two of the families from the study. One child had been diagnosed before the family moved to Dover Township; another family had lived in the area, but then moved away. The child was diagnosed while the family was living in another state, Berry said.
James S. Blumenstock, acting senior assistant commissioner for the health department, said researchers are evaluating one other case to determine if that child should be included in the study.
Berry said interviews of the control-group families, those whose children did not develop cancer, also have been completed. There are 200 families in the control group, and Berry said 85 percent of the families approached have agreed to participate in the study.
"That's really a phenomenal level of participation for this type of study,"he said.
Berry said researchers also are conducting a review of birth records, which they are matching against cancer registry data from New Jersey and other states. The effort is aimed at finding children who were born in Dover Township but were diagnosed with cancer in other areas of the state or other states.
"We are trying to find cases that we might not otherwise have known about,"he said.
Berry said the health department has contacted 10 other states with cancer registries, including Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia.
In selecting which registries to check, researchers looked at information from the U.S. Census Bureau that tracks the areas where Ocean County residents are likely to move. Berry said investigators also looked for states that had cancer registries that had been in existence for several years, so they could get many years worth of data.
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