Leukemia

Leukemia (leukaemia in Commonwealth English) is a group of blood diseases characterized by malignancies (cancer) of the blood-forming tissues. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer in the industrialised world; in the UK, around one in 2000 children are affected.

Treatment

The mainstay of treatment of leukemia is chemotherapy, sometimes with the addition of radiation therapy.

Related Topics:
Chemotherapy - Radiation therapy

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Because of the severity of some courses, bone marrow transplants are sometimes necessary. Healthy bone marrow transplanted in to the body helps rebuild tissue damaged by the treatment. Successful bone marrow transplants require precise matching of blood characteristics. Only 20% of leukemia patients have a sibling donor who is a good match. Of those who don't have a sibling match, fewer than a third can find a good match elsewhere.

Related Topics:
Bone marrow transplant - Tissue

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An alternative to bone marrow transplant is cord blood transplant which uses cells from an umbilical cord to replace the cells damaged by leukemia therapies. The cord blood process has an advantage over marrow transplantation in that the cord blood cells have not yet been programmed to attack foreign tissue. This process has been successfully used in children. The potential for success with adults is not as certain as a single umbilical cord contains only one-tenth the number of cells that a typical marrow transplant would supply. In addition, cord blood is slower to develop into a full complement of blood cells. However, mismatched cord transplants are less likely to trigger acute graft-versus-host disease than mismatched bone marrow would.

Related Topics:
Cord blood - Umbilical cord - Graft-versus-host disease

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Not every form of leukemia requires treatment. The chronic leukemias (CML and CLL) may be treated with oral medication or even with "watchful waiting".

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