What is Leukemia?

Leukemia is a blood or bone marrow malignancy. Blood cells are made in the bone marrow. An issue in blood cell synthesis can lead to leukemia. It mainly affects the white blood cells or leukocytes.

Leukemia is most common in persons over the age of 55, but it is also the most typical cancer among children under the age of 15.

According to the National Cancer Institute, 61,780 persons will be diagnosed with leukemia in 2019. Leukemia is expected to kill 22,840 people in the same year, according to the researchers.

Acute leukemia begins and progresses swiftly, but chronic leukemia worsens with time. There are various forms of leukemia, and which sort a person has influences the best course of treatment and their chances of survival.

We give an overview of leukemia, its causes, treatments, types, and symptoms in this article.

Causes of Leukemia

When the DNA of growing blood cells, primarily white cells, is damaged, leukemia develops. As a result of this, the blood cells multiply and divide at an unpredictable rate. Healthy blood cells die and are replaced by new cells. These grow in the marrow of the bone marrow. The aberrant blood cells do not perish at the end of their life cycle as they should. Instead, they expand and take up more room.

As the bone marrow generates more cancer cells, the blood becomes overcrowded, inhibiting the growth and function of healthy white blood cells. Cancerous cells eventually outweigh healthy cells in the blood.

Risk Factors

Leukemia is caused by a number of reasons. Some of these risk factors are linked to leukemia more strongly than others:

Artificial ionizing radiation: This could include radiation therapy for past cancer, albeit this is a greater risk factor for some types of cancer than others.

• Certain viruses: Leukemia has been linked to the human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1).
• Chemotherapy: People who have had chemotherapy for a previous malignancy are more likely to acquire leukemia later in life.
• Exposure to benzene: Benzene is a solvent included in various cleaning products and hair colors.
• Some genetic disorders: Down syndrome patients have a third copy of chromosome 21. This raises their risk of acute myeloid or acute lymphocytic leukemia to 2–3%, which is higher than in children who do not have the syndrome.

Li-Fraumeni syndrome is another hereditary disease linked to leukemia. The TP53 gene is altered as a result of this.

Having siblings with leukemia increases the risk of leukemia by a small but considerable amount. If a person has an identical twin who has leukemia, they have a one-in-five chance of developing the disease.

Inherited immune system issues: Certain inherited immunological abnormalities raise the chance of severe infections as well as leukemia. These include:

• Bloom syndrome
• Ataxia-telangiectasia
• Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome
• Schwachman-Diamond syndrome

Immune suppression: Childhood leukemia can develop as a result of the immune system being deliberately suppressed. This could happen when a child receives an organ transplant and is given drugs to protect their body from rejecting the organ.

More research is needed on a number of risk variables to prove their link to leukemia, such as:

• Using hair dyes
• Susceptibility to certain chemicals in the workplace, such as gasoline, diesel, and pesticides
• Exposure to electromagnetic fields
• Smoking

Types of Leukemia

There are four main categories of leukemia:

• Acute
• Lymphocytic
• Myelogenous
• Chronic

Chronic and acute leukemias

During the lifespan of a white blood cell, it goes through several stages.

Acute leukemia causes growing cells to multiply rapidly and accumulate in the bone marrow and blood. They leave the bone marrow too soon and are rendered useless.

Chronic leukemia progresses more slowly than acute leukemia. It enables the creation of more mature and functional cells.

Acute leukemia causes healthy blood cells to overcrowd faster than chronic leukemia.

Leukemia of the lymphocytic and myelogenous types

Leukemia is distinguished by the type of blood cell it affects, according to doctors.

Lymphocytic Leukemia

Cancerous alterations in the type of bone marrow that generates lymphocytes cause lymphocytic leukemia. A lymphocyte is a type of white blood cell that helps the immune system work.

Myelogenous Leukemia

Changes in the bone marrow cells that create blood cells, rather than the blood cells themselves, cause myelogenous leukemia.

Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL)

Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is a variety of cancer that affects white blood cells. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most widespread cancer in children under the age of five (ALL). It can, however, afflict adults, especially those over the age of 50. Adults account for four out of every five deaths caused by ALL.

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

This is most common in adults over the age of 55, but it can also affect younger people. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia affects about 25% of adults with leukemia (CLL). It affects men more than women, and children are rarely affected.

Acute Myelogenous Leukemia

Adults are more likely than children to develop acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), but it is still a rare malignancy. It affects men more frequently than women. Fever, trouble breathing, and joint discomfort are among the symptoms that appear immediately. This type can be triggered by environmental factors.

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Adults are more likely to acquire chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). CML accounts for about 15% of all leukemia cases in the United States. This kind of leukemia affects just a small percentage of children.

Treatment of Leukemia

The type of leukemia people suffer from, their age and their overall health will determine their treatment options.

Chemotherapy is the most natural treatment for leukemia. This will be customized by a cancer care team based on the type of leukemia.

A person’s chances of achieving remission are better if treatment begins early.

Types of treatment include:

• Watchful waiting: Slow-growing leukemias, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia, may not be actively treated by a doctor (CLL).
• Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is when a doctor injects drugs into a patient’s veins via a drip or a needle. These are cancer cells that are targeted and killed. Noncancerous cells, on the other hand, can be damaged, and serious side effects, such as hair loss, weight loss, and nausea, might result. The most natural treatment for AML is chemotherapy. Doctors may recommend a bone marrow transplant in some cases.
• Therapy with a specific goal: This method of treatment employs tyrosine kinase inhibitors, which target cancer cells while causing minimal adverse effects in other cells. Imatinib, dasatinib, and nilotinib are other examples. A gene mutation that responds to imatinib is found in many persons with CML. According to one study, those who got imatinib treatment had a 5-year survival rate of around 90%.
• Interferon therapy: This is a type of chemotherapy that slows and finally stops the growth and spread of leukemia cells. This medicine works in a similar way to chemicals produced naturally by the immune system. It can, however, have serious negative. It can, however, have serious negative.
• Radiation therapy: Doctors recommend radiation therapy to persons with specific kinds of leukemia, such as ALL, to eliminate bone marrow tissue before a transplant.
• Surgery: Surgical removal of the spleen is common, but it depends on the type of leukemia a person has.
• Stem cell transplantation: In this process, a cancer care team uses chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or both to destroy the existing bone marrow. They then inject fresh stem cells into the bone marrow to generate cancer-free blood cells. This method has the potential to be effective in the treatment of CML. Younger people with leukemia are more likely than older people to have a successful transplant.

Symptoms of Leukemia

Symptoms of leukemia include the following:

• Poor blood clotting: This might cause bruising or bleeding that takes a long time to heal. Petechiae, which are little red and purple spots on the body, is also a possibility. These symptoms indicate that the blood is not effectively clotting. Petechiae forms when immature white blood cells suffocate platelets, which are essential for blood coagulation.
• Infections on a regular basis: White blood cells are critical in the fight against infection. If a person’s white blood cells aren’t functioning properly, he or she may become infected frequently. It’s possible that the immune system will assault the body’s own cells.
• Anemia: A person may develop anemia since there are fewer functional red blood cells available. This indicates that their blood is deficient in hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a protein that distributes iron throughout the body. A lack of iron can cause difficulty or laborious breathing, as well as pale complexion.

Other symptoms may include:

• Fever
• Night sweats
• Tiredness
• Bone pain
• Nausea
• chills
• Flu-like symptoms
• Weight loss

When the liver or spleen swells, a person may feel bloated and eat less, leading to weight loss.

Weight loss might occur even if the liver or spleen is not enlarged. A headache could signal the presence of malignant cells in the central nervous system (CNS).

All of these, however, could be signs of something else. Confirming a diagnosis of leukemia necessitates consultation and testing.