Leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It occurs when the bone marrow makes too many white blood cells (lymphocytes), which are part of the body’s immune system to fight infections. Leukaemia cells do not function properly as white blood cells, and they do not fight infections very well. They can also crowd the bone marrow, meaning less room for healthy blood cells.
There are 4 most common types of leukaemia:
The names refer to whether they are acute or chronic (develop over a short, or long period of time), and whether they begin in the lymphoid or myeloid cells. Lymphoid cells develop into lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. Myeloid cells develop into other blood cells.
The first signs are most commonly:
Other symptoms include:
Although these symptoms vary depending on the type of leukaemia.
There are different risk factors associated with developing different types of leukaemia.
Some common factors include:
Blood tests can be used to diagnose leukaemia by checking blood cell counts, related infections, enzymes associated with leukaemia and genetic tests. Some chronic leukaemias do not show symptoms so diagnosis can be accidental when having a blood test for another reason.
Other tests that are used to diagnose leukaemia include:
Leukaemia can be cured when caught early and treatment depends on:
The most common treatment for acute leukaemia is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy involves the use of medicines to remove cancer cells, although it can also affect healthy cells. Chemotherapy is administered in different ways, depending on the type of acute leukaemia. Chronic leukaemia commonly involves chemotherapy although often combined with targeted therapy. Targeted therapy involves specific medicines that remove cancer cells or inhibit their growth.
Other medications are used to avoid some side effects of chemotherapy or increase its effectiveness. Steroids, hormones naturally found in the body, can be administered to increase the effect of chemotherapy, help destroy leukaemia cells, or to reduce allergic reactions to some chemotherapy drugs.
If chemotherapy is given in a high dose, a stem cell transplant may be necessary to restore the bone marrow that has been destroyed by the chemotherapy treatment. The transplanted cells can come from a donor or from the patient’s own body.
Chronic leukaemia can have no symptoms, or vague symptoms such as an ongoing cold, so an individual can go years without knowing. Whereas symptoms of acute leukaemia often occur quickly over a few weeks.
Leukaemia starts in blood cells in the bone marrow. The type of blood cell where it begins, depends on the type of leukaemia.
Leukaemia is one of the 10 most common cancers in both men and women in Australia. Most types of leukaemia are mostly common in adults over 50, but leukaemia is also the most common cancer in children and teenagers, making up around one-third of cancers in these young people. Most of these cases are acute forms of leukaemia.
Depending on the type of leukaemia it can develop slowly over several years, even decades or in just a few weeks.
In Australia, between 2014 and 2018 the chance of surviving at least 5 years post diagnosis of leukaemia was 64%.
ACRF awarded a $2.5M grant to the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the University of Adelaide’s adjacent Adelaide Health and Medical Sciences building to help establish the ACRF Centre for Integrated Cancer Systems Biology. The state-of-the-art facility will bring together next generation technologies to transform patient outcomes through the delivery of targeted and personalised cancer therapy. It will target five critically important cancer streams – chronic myeloid leukaemia, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, multiple myeloma, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer.
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