Leukemia

Acute leukemia, Leuk means white blood cells and anemia refers to the blood. Leukemia is a cancer of white blood cells. white blood cells help your body fight against body infections.

blood cells form in your bone marrow. In leukemia bone marrow produce abnormal white blood cells that crowd out the healthy blood cells making it hard for blood to do its work.

Acute leukemia develops too quickly because cancer cells multiplying very fast.

So in acute leukemia, there is an uncontrolled proliferation of partially developed white blood cells is called Blasts cells, that build up in our blood for a short period of time.

 Leukemia also means cancer white blood cells, it can also be used as a reference to cancer of any blood cells like red blood cells and platelets. 

Acute leukemia can be broadly classified into acute myeloid leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

mostly common in old age, but ALL  most common in children.

In both cases(AML ALL) blasts cells interferes with the development and function of Healthy white blood cells, platelets, red blood cells.

Every blood cell starts its life in the bone marrow as a hematopoietic stem cell.

Hematopoietic stem cells are multipotent means that they can give rise to both myeloblasts that are precursors of myeloid blood cells and lymphoblasts which are precursors of lymphoid blood cells.

Lymphoblasts can be pre-B cells, that develop into B lymphocytes or pre T- cells that develop into T lymphocytes. 

A hematopoietic stem cell develops into a myeloid cell, it will mature into erythrocytes, a blood cell, a thrombocyte, a platelet, a leukocyte, a white blood cells like a monocyte of granulocyte.

Granulocytes cells with tiny granules inside of them which include neutrophils basophils and eosinophils.

• If a hematopoietic stem cell develops into the lymphoid cell, it will mature into some other kind of leukocyte, T cell, B cell, or a natural killer cell which is referred to as lymphocytes.

          After the development of these cells, they leave the bone marrow to start traveling around the blood and settle down in tissues or organs like the lymph nodes and spleen.

Acute leukemia caused by the mutation in the precursor blood cells in the bone marrow.

In the case of acute lymphoblastic leukemia its usually due to the chromosomal translocation or due to an abnormal chromosome number.

Suitable chromosomal translocations include translocation of chromosome 12 or 21 translocations of chromosome 9 and 22 called the Philadelphia chromosome. These produce abnormal intracellular protein, which affects the cell's function and cell division.

ALL further classified into T-cells, where there is the proliferation of T-cell precursors and in B-cell ALL there is the proliferation of B-cell precursors.

AML caused by the variety of abnormalities like chromosomal translocations used to subclassify AML into different types based on the morphology of the myeloblast into AML without maturation.

AML with maturation causes acute promyelocytic leukemia or acute myelomonocytic leukemia, acute monocytic leukemia, acute erythroid leukemia, and megakaryoblastic leukemia.

Acute promyelocytic leukemia is an important subtype characterized by translocations of chromosome 15 and 17 which disrupts the retinoic acid receptor alpha gene which is required for normal cell division.

Possible risk factors for ALL include being male, being white, exposure to radiation, for adults, being older than 70.

Symptoms of Leukemia 

1. Weakness or feeling tired
2. Fever
3. Easy bruising or bleeding
4. Bleeding under the skin
5. Shortness of breath
6. Weight loss
7. Loss of appetite
8. Pain in the bones or stomach
9. Pain or feeling of fullness below the ribs
10. Painless lumps in the neck, underarm, stomach or groin.

Treatments

1. Chemotherapy
2. Radiation therapy
3. Stem cells transplants
4. Targeted therapy.

Chronic Myeloid leukemia

This is one of four main types of leukemia. Hematologists and oncologists treat patients who have CML and other types of blood cancer. 

Most of the patients who have CML treat with daily oral drug therapy.

More than 50 % of the cases are diagnosed with people age more than 64 years.4500 to 5500 people are diagnosed each year in the united states.

Chronic myeloid leukemia caused by a genetic defect not it is inheritable.

How it develops?

When the genetic material of a developing stem cell(red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets) in a bone marrow damaged called an acquired mutation.

 Then these damaged cells become leukemic cells and develop and multiplies into many CML that survive and grow better than the normal cells.

Chronic  myeloid has three phases

1. Chronic phase
2. Accelerated phase
3. Blast phase

Symptoms vary on the bases of leukemia phases. With the passage of time, it converted into a blastic phase.

The chronic phase easier to treat, patients have no symptoms.

At the accelerated phase patients feels symptoms because the rate of cancer cells increased in the bone marrow.

Anemia is the situation where the number of red blood cells in the blood.

Neutropenia is the situation when there is a low number of white blood cells in the blood. the immune system cannot work well against the infections due to lack of neutrophils.

Thrombocytopenia is a condition where there is a fewer number of platelets in the blood cause bleeding.

When all three cells counts become less that condition called pancytopenia.

Symptoms of chronic leukemia

Chronic leukemia develops very slowly, early signs mild and unnoticeable.

1. Feeling of tiredness, bone and joint pain
2. Shortness of breath
3. Weight loss
4. Fever
5. Nights sweats
6. Anemia
7. Infections
8. Nosebleeds
9. Pain or full feeling I the upper-left abdomen, which is where the spleen is located.
10.  Change of vision
11.  Ringing in the ear
12.  Stroke
13.  Periods of confusion

 In the blast phase or acute phase, the cancer cells crowd out the healthy cells and include severe symptoms like recurrent infections, spontaneous bleeding, swollen glands, lumps on the skin, and bone pain.

Treatment

Complete medical history clinical examination, and review of symptoms.A complete count of blood cells like red blood cells, white blood cells platelets, and also the testing of the bone marrow to known how much it becomes severe. 

Abdominal ultrasound, CT scan, Enlarged spleen.Polymerase chain reaction test to known the BCR-Abl chromosomes.