Healthy Life

Leukemia is a cancer. All cancers begin in the cells that make up the blood and other tissues. The normal procedure is that old cells die and are replaced by new cells. There are times when this process goes wrong and the body produces new cells when they are not needed, and the old cells don’t die. There are two different types of leukemia and they are classed as chronic or acute.

• Chronic leukemia is when the abnormal blood cells are still working. People with this form of the disease may not have any symptoms.
• Acute leukemia is when the blood cells are unable to carry out their work. The abnormal cells rapidly increase and the leukemia quickly worsens.

Lymphocytic leukemia affects the lymphoid cells. The other type is myelogenous leukemia. There are four types of leukemia more commonly found:

• Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is generally associated with people over the age of 55 years. It is seldom found in children. This type of leukemia accounts for around 7,000 new cases every year.
• Chronic myeloid leukemia this is also a type of leukemia to affect mainly adults and about 4,000 new cases are registered each year.
• Acute lymphocytic leukemia is the type of leukemia most commonly found in children. The new cases are just under 4,000 cases each year.
• Acute myeloid leukemia affects both children and adults. This type of leukemia throws up around 10,600 cases every year.

Research has failed to pinpoint the exact cause of leukemia. However, it has shown that there are risk factors that have a higher chance of developing leukemia. The following are some of the high risk factors:

• Radiation – Exposure to high levels of radiation are more likely to develop leukemia.
• Chemicals – Long time exposure to chemicals such as benzene are known to be a cause of leukemia.
• Chemotherapy – Patients being treated for cancer sometimes develop leukemia because of the cancer fighting drugs.
• Down syndrome – This and other genetic diseases may increase the chance of contracting leukemia.
• Myelodysplastic syndrome – People suffering from this disease are at a risk of contracting acute myeloid cancer.

These risk factors do not necessarily mean that you will develop leukemia. Many people with some of these risk factors never develop it and other people with none of them develop the cancer.