Helix Exams: Leukemia

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Leukemia

Definition of Leukemia

Leukemia is a slowly progressing cancer that starts in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. Leukemias are the result of an abnormal development of leukocytes (white blood cells) and their precursors. Leukemia cells look different than normal cells and do not function properly.

Health Highlights: Sept. 16, 2007 The Chinese government has recalled yet another group of products because of possible adverse medical reactions -- this time drugs designed to fight leukemia. The Associated Press reports that the drugs -- methotrexate and cytarabin hydrochloride -- were causing leg pains and other problems. China's news agency said that most of the tainted drugs had been recovered but did not say whether any of the medications had been exported, the A.P. said. The drugs were manufactured by the Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Co., the wire service reported. It said China's State Food and Drug Administration and Health Ministry banned the two leukemia drugs after receiving reports that several children with leukemia who were taking them complained of leg pains and difficulty walking. A number of products exported from China have had to be recalled during the past two years, ranging from millions of toys that had too much lead content to millions of pounds of pet food additives. The most hig Read the Article
Health Highlights: Sept. 19, 2007 For the first time since World War II, America's married couples are more likely to have split by the 25-year mark than to have stayed together, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows. As reported in The New York Times, more than half of people who might have celebrated a 25th wedding anniversary in the year 2000 either found themselves divorced, separated or widowed instead, the government data found. Part of that may have to do with the fact that Americans are now more likely to wed later in life. In their mid-20s, most men (54 percent) and 41 percent of women have not yet tied the knot, the census found. However, more Americans are marrying more than once during their lifetime -- in 1996, 69 percent of men and 76 percent of women over the age of 15 had been married only once, but those numbers dropped to 54 percent and 58 percent, respectively, by the latest census. The divorce rate has remained constant over the past decade, at about one in every five people surveye Read the Article
Drug a New Weapon Against One Form of Breast Cancer WEDNESDAY, Oct. 10 (HealthDay News) -- When added to a standard chemotherapy, the drug paclitaxel (Taxol) cuts the recurrence of breast cancer by 41 percent in women with a particular form of tumor, a new study finds. Those tumors are called "HER2-positive" because their cells produce an excess of the protein human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2). In recent years, cancer specialists have found that breast tumors with different characteristics respond differently to various regimens. The new study adds another piece to that puzzle, experts say. "Over the last 10 years, we have come to realize that breast cancer isn't one disease but a family of diseases," explained study co-author Dr. Eric Winer, director of the breast oncology center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "In this study, what we saw is very different benefits for paclitaxel in different subgroups of women," he said. "This adds to a growing body of literature" about which chemotherapy regim Read the Article
Tasigna Approved for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia MONDAY, Oct. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Tasigna (nilotinib) has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in people who are resistant or intolerant to other therapies, maker Novartis AG said Monday. CML, among the most common forms of leukemia, affects about 4,500 people in the United States each year. Some have become resistant to or cannot tolerate a standard therapy for CML, Gleevec. Tasigna, taken twice daily, targets a protein that is produced only by cells that have an abnormal chromosome in people with Philadelphia chromosome-positive CML, Novartis said in a statement. The protein is a key cause of the over-production of the white blood cells that characterizes this form of CML. Reported side effects of the drug include rash, nausea, fatigue, headache, constipation, diarrhea, and vomiting. Users should avoid food two hours before and one hour after taking Tasigna, Novartis said. Read the Article
Doctors Report High Survival Rates for Hodgkin's Disease WEDNESDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Here's an example of progress in cancer treatment: a trial that produced long-term survival rates better than 90 percent and that is described as outmoded because it's been replaced by treatments that get even better results with fewer side effects. The cancer is Hodgkin's disease, a type of lymphoma, or cancer of lymph tissue found in the lymph nodes, spleen, liver and bone marrow. And the new findings come from a European group led by French physicians. They are reporting five-year, disease-free survival as high as 98 percent for patients with the most favorable prognosis and in the mid-80s or better for those who showed up with a worse outlook. The results are published in the Nov. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It's not an easy paper for a layman to read, because it is full of acronyms for the combination chemotherapy that was used (MOPP-ABV) and different cycles of radiation therapy. The study conclusion is that this Read the Article
Drug Combo Boosts Multiple Myeloma Survival WEDNESDAY, Nov. 21 (HealthDay News) -- A combination drug regimen that includes a derivative of thalidomide extended survival, as well as the time it took for the disease to reappear, in patients with multiple myeloma. The combination of Revlimid (lenalidomide) and dexamethasone was given U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory approval in June of 2006 for multiple myeloma patients who had already failed one treatment. Now, two papers, appearing in the Nov. 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, mark the final publications of the study that paved the way for that approval, said Hildy Dillon, vice president of patient services disease programs at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in White Plains, N.Y. "People who got [the combination regimen] had three times the likelihood of responding," added Dr. Donna M. Weber, lead author of the North American segment of the study and associate professor of medicine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "Overall survival Read the Article
Health Highlights: Nov. 22, 2007 U.K. health officials on Thursday announced they are planning to stockpile enough pandemic flu vaccine to protect the entire population, the Associated Press reported. A flu pandemic was "one of the most severe risks" facing Britain, Health Secretary Alan Johnson told lawmakers. He said he had signed an agreement that would assure the delivery of enough vaccine to protect every citizen. Experts can only formulate a vaccine once the strain of the pandemic virus had been identified, however. Health officials said it remains impossible to predict when a pandemic might strike or how widespread it might be. According to an unnamed department of health spokeswoman, the last global flu epidemic occurred in 1968 and killed over one million people worldwide. She told the AP that "we don't believe an influenza [pandemic] is imminent." Read the Article
Health Highlights: Nov. 23, 2007 Reports of neurological problems in children taking the flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza mean the medicines need a warning label on their packaging, according to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety review released Friday. According to the Associated Press, the safety review follows 25 deaths among Tamiflu users under the age of 21, most of them occurring in Japan. In five cases, children fell from windows or balconies or ran into traffic, the AP said. The FDA began its review in 2005 after receiving reports of children experiencing hallucinations, convulsions and other neurological problems while on Tamiflu. Data from the review will be considered by a special panel of outside experts that will meet on Tuesday to mull the agency's proposed label changes. The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its advisory panels, but usually does. According to the AP, there have so far been no child deaths linked to Relenza, but regulators say some children taking the drug have Read the Article
Cancer-Suppressing Gene Tied to Female Fertility WEDNESDAY, Nov. 28 (HealthDay News) - A gene long linked to suppressing the growth of cancer may also play a vital role in human reproduction, researchers report. In experiments with mice, researchers found that females lacking the p53 gene had fewer embryos implanted in the uterus, less chance of becoming pregnant, and when they did conceive, they had fewer offspring. A lack of p53 did not affect the fertility of male mice, however. "This is an amazing new function for a gene that everybody thought they knew what it did," said lead researcher Arnold J. Levine, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J. "This is a gene that is not only watching over us so that we cannot get cancer, but it watches over our genome so that we can develop normally," he added. The report appears in the Nov. 29 issue of Nature. The p53 gene responds to a variety of stresses, such as radiation damage, in ways that allow it to protect cells against cancer, Levine explained. Read the Article
Rise in CT Scans Poses Cancer Risk WEDNESDAY, Nov. 28 (HealthDay News) -- The number of CT scans performed in the United States has increased dramatically since the 1980s, and that means an increased risk of cancer for patients caused by exposure to high doses of radiation, a new report contends. Today, more than 62 million CT scans a year are done in the United States, compared with 3 million in 1980. A CT scan -- an imaging method that uses X-rays to create cross-sectional pictures of the body -- can have radiation doses 50 to 250 times greater than the dose of a conventional X-ray, the report's authors note. "The radiation doses from CT scans have been clearly demonstrated to increase cancer risk," David J. Brenner, director of the Columbia University Radiological Research Accelerator Facility, said during a news conference Tuesday. "On an individual basis, not a big individual risk, but a small risk applied to an increasingly large population spells trouble down the road," he added. Brenner and his colleagu Read the Article
Research Can Help Close Cancer 'Race Gap' THURSDAY, Nov. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Collaborations between researchers and community groups can help ease cancer disparities among minority populations, researchers report. They based their conclusions on the results of U.S. initiatives launched in Nashville, Tenn. and among the Navajo Nation. Such partnerships between researchers and community groups can improve the quality of data collection, provide new insight into social factors/help, and result in sustained health improvements in disadvantaged populations, the scientists said. The initiatives were to be outlined Thursday in Atlanta at an American Association for Cancer Research conference. Like many communities across the United States, Nashville has experienced a large growth in its Hispanic population, a group whose health care needs are under-studied and not well documented in the academic literature. In response, a group of Nashville-area researchers partnered with community groups to survey the cancer care and Read the Article
Health Highlights: Dec. 9, 2007 Gleevec, the drug that has shown significant results in prolonging the life of adult leukemia patients, is demonstrating its effectiveness in children with certain types of the malignant blood disease, scientists announced Sunday. Researchers from the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Cancer Institute reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Atlanta that Gleevec has been shown to improve outcomes for children with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL), according to a university news release Additionally, the drug, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2001, continues to demonstrate its effectiveness in prolonging the lives of adult leukemia patients, the OHSU statement said. Because the drug is relatively new, its effectiveness is under constant review, and the latest data indicate that patients taking Gleevec for six years haven't moved to the advanced stage of the cancer. "Th Read the Article
Health Highlights: Dec. 10, 2007 While disease management programs may improve quality of care for patients with chronic health problems such as diabetes and congestive heart failure, there's little evidence that such programs save money, according to a study released Monday by the non-profit research organization RAND Corp. Researchers analyzed previous studies on disease management programs -- which use interventions ranging from telephone reminders to home visits by medical professionals -- and found that the programs can improve health care quality and disease control and, in the case of congestive heart failure, lower hospital admission rates. But there's little evidence about whether the programs improve patient health outcomes or save money over the long term. "Disease management is viewed as the silver bullet that can fix two problems of the health care system -- inadequate quality and high costs. Unfortunately, while there is evidence that disease management programs can indeed improve the quality of Read the Article
Health Highlights: Dec. 11, 2007 Some 42.5 million Americans don't have health insurance, up from about 41 million in 1997, according to a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey. Based on findings from the National Health Interview Survey of 41,823 people conducted in the first half of this year, the CDC estimated that 30.8 million people were uninsured for more than a year and about 53.2 million were uninsured for at least part of the year prior to the survey, Bloomberg news reported. About 22 percent of working adults younger than age 64 were uninsured for at least part of the preceding year, and 14 percent had no health coverage for more than one year. Among jobless people, 52 percent were uninsured in the preceding year, and 33 percent were uninsured for more than one year. However, the survey found that the percentage of uninsured children has continued to decline, Bloomberg reported. In 1997, about 9.9 million (13.9 percent) of children were uninsured, compared with 6.4 million (8.6 Read the Article
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