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Leukemia: Types, Diagnosis And Treatment

by — Last updated: 2017-09-06 in Cancer

Table of Contents

According to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, more than 52,000 people will be diagnosed with leukemia during 2014 and almost half of them are expected to die from the disease. Let´s take a look at its causes, how it is diagnosed and its treatment.

Leukemia usually presents in an acute or a chronic form and affects both adults and children. The acute form of leukemia occurs suddenly and it is usually diagnosed by the presence of immature white blood cells in the bloodstream of the patient. Chronic leukemia develops more slowly; it takes weeks or even months to progress, so patients are usually under vigilance to evaluate the progression of the disease before taking any treatment. In the case of the acute form, this one usually requires immediate treatment, since the production of immature cells is very intense.

Myelogenous and lymphocytic leukemia  

Leukemia is also classified in myelogenous when the affected cells are the precursors of the three blood cells types: white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets; and in lymphocytic, when the abnormal cells are the precursors of white blood cells, also known as lymphocytes.

The main feature of lymphocytic leukemia is the overproduction of white blood cells in the bone marrow.

Since this last one starts filling up with immature lymphocytes, they have to be released into the bloodstream before they finish their maturation process. Immature lymphocytes are not able to fight infections and because the bone marrow is busy producing them, it stops producing red blood cells and platelets.

Myelogenous leukemia, on the other hand, does not characterizes by the overproduction of immature cells, but of abnormal mature cells that are also released into the bloodstream, does not function as they should and affect other tissues as well.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is the most common type of leukemia that affects children, while acute myelogenous leukemia is more common in adults.

Symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of leukemia  

Because all blood cells are affected by leukemia, the patient usually presents a mixed symptomatology, which is the result of the lack of these cells.

For example, symptoms of leukemia in children and adults can signalize in fever, bruises, bone pain, painless lumps in the neck, underarm, stomach or groin, weakness and paleness, loss of appetite, anemia and low counts of blood cells.

The diagnosis of any type of leukemia relies on the number of blood cells present in the patient. When cell blood counts for normal cells are decreased, the analyst also takes a small sample of circulating blood from the patient to look under the microscope. This microscopic analysis will allow the detection of immature cells, since their morphology is different to the morphology of the mature ones. A bone marrow biopsy may also be necessary, depending on the results shown in previous tests.

Depending on the type of leukemia and the progression of the disease, treatment will be based on chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

See Also: Interferon Treatment For Leukemia

These treatments are aimed to destroy the abnormal cells in the patients’ body. As a last resource, a bone marrow transplant will be performed in order to replace the defective bone marrow from the patient, which produces abnormal cells, with a normal bone marrow from a healthy donor.

The prognosis of the disease depends on several factors, including the age of onset of leukemia, the gender of the patient, if it is acute or chronic and the type of cells that are affected, the presence of a different disease, such as Down syndrome, the causing agent, which can be a genetic mutation, and if the cells have spread to the brain or not.