2023-09-20 13:29:45
September of each year is the month designated for blood cancer awareness, during which health authorities around the world intensify their efforts to spread awareness and shed light on what it is, its symptoms that you should be aware of, how to prevent it, or even review the latest treatment methods.
The most important of these methods so far is stem cell transplantation from a healthy donor, to replace the patient’s cancer cells with new disease-free cells, which is considered the most effective treatment for incurable cases of blood diseases and cancers, while genetic modification will open promising future opportunities and new horizons for specific cell therapies in leukemia. .
In this report, we learn with Dr. Kaloyanidis Panayotis, a hematologist, regarding blood diseases and cancers, symptoms and treatment methods.
Dr. Panayiotis defines blood cancers as a group of malignant tumors that affect blood cells (white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets), and blood-forming tissue organs such as bone marrow (the soft, sponge-like material found in bones that serves as a blood cell production factory). , lymph nodes, spleen, in particular, cancer of white blood cells is leukemia (acute or chronic) or myelodysplastic syndromes, while malignant proliferation of red blood cells or platelets causes malignancies called polycythemia vera and essential thrombocytosis on straight.
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Sometimes, malignant cells infiltrate the lymph nodes or spleen, causing cancers called lymphomas (Hodgkin or non-Hodgkin).
Malignant transformation of plasma cells (specific blood cells responsible for producing antibodies) leads to another type of leukemia called multiple myeloma.
Dr. Panayiotis explains that the cause of blood cancers is not well understood. However, there is strong evidence that environmental factors, dietary habits or lifestyle such as smoking, exposure to chemicals or radiation are some of the factors that help the development of leukemia, while others are not considered. Blood cancers are hereditary diseases and are not transmitted from parents to children, like some benign blood diseases (hemoglobinopathies, hemophilia, etc.), while lymphomas, multiple myeloma, and some types of leukemia are considered the most common types of leukemia, but their occurrence is strongly related to the patient’s age, and for children. The most common type is acute leukemia, but in adults and the elderly, lymphomas and multiple myeloma are the main causes of leukemia, followed by chronic and acute leukemia.
Degree of disease severity
Dr. Panayotis points out that the clinical course of leukemia varies from one type to another, as acute leukemia and aggressive lymphomas have an aggressive course and, without treatment, lead to death quickly, while multiple myeloma, chronic leukemia, or non-aggressive lymphomas follow a more aggressive course. Slow, often asymptomatic, which sometimes lasts for years even without treatment, however, all blood cancers are treatable diseases, and with appropriate and timely treatment, the outcome becomes much better, and approximately 40-70% of patients achieve Survive for a long time and half of them can be cured of their disease.
Common symptoms
Common symptoms of leukemia include:
Unexplained fatigue. Pale skin. Bruising or bleeding. Unexplained weight loss. Unexplained fever or recurrent infections. Swelling of the cervix, axilla, or groin due to enlarged lymph nodes, and a feeling of fullness or abdominal swelling due to an enlarged spleen.
Therefore, as soon as the patient notices such symptoms, he should visit a hematologist for examination, where physical evaluation, laboratory tests, specific imaging, and sometimes bone marrow evaluation will confirm or rule out the diagnosis of leukemia.
Methods of Treatment
Dr. Panayiotis confirms that the treatment of leukemia depends on chemotherapy in addition to or sometimes without radiotherapy. For patients diagnosed with acute leukemia, stem cell transplantation from a donor to the patient is still the most effective treatment with a high possibility of cure. But in recent years, due to better understanding of cancer, and updates to medicines, less harmful and highly effective targeted therapies have been introduced to treat leukemia, with very promising results. Recently, genetic modification of a specific subset of lymphocytes ( T lymphocytes) to lymphomas) and achieved very promising results, thus opening new horizons for specific cell therapies in leukemia.
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