Clues of Acute Myeloid Leukemia may Exist years before Analysis

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of cancer in which WBC multiply rapidly and abnormally and also show interference in the production of a normal cell. It takes place in the myeloid line of blood cell. Normal cells are replaced by leukemic cells due to which the number of RBC reduces.

According to the Researcher, Dr. Pinkal Desai, assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and an oncologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, a person having AML have a genetic mutation in which their blood development of AML could be detected nine years prior by detecting the mutation.

When a patient becomes older they cannot tolerate the standard treatment of chemotherapy and stem cell transplant. This is the reason for a low survival rate of the patient in this type of disease.

Therefore if early signs of AML could be monitored or intervened early, doctors can track disease development in early time and can offer targeted and well-tolerated therapies sooner.

In their research, they evaluated data from the from the Women’s Health Initiative, a large, long-term national study by the National Institutes of Health. They used sophisticated technology and analyzed genetic mutation in the blood sample of 212 people developed AML later. They kept these sample as a control. They compared these sample with other samples which were taken from people for an average of nine years before AML diagnosed.

So they observed that on an average all the women who had TP53 mutation developed this disease. Those women who had TP53 mutation developed this disease sooner as compared to those AML patients who do not have such mutation. In addition, in some women, IDH1 and IDH2 mutation leads to the development of AML.

In the light of this, researchers think that some genetic mutation can give clues so that doctor could now that soon a person will develop the disease.

Although researchers knew that currently, they cannot make a clinical decision on bases of this research data, they wanted to generate new therapeutic possibilities for the patient using genetic information.

Story Source: Signs of acute myeloid leukemia may be present years before diagnosis