What exactly happens in the leukemias?

Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker · January 14, 2004, 3:43am

I assume that since they’re considered cancers of (white, I believe) blood cells, that the body is mass-producing mutant white blood cells. That doesn’t sound good, but the question is “What exactly does it cause to happen?” I can visualize the problems caused by organ, skin and bone type cancers, but I’m a little fuzzy on leukemia. What’s up?

Duck_Duck_Goose · January 14, 2004, 4:15am

http://www.leukemia.org/all_page?item_id=9346

Leukemia is a malignant disease (cancer) of the bone marrow and blood. It is characterized by the uncontrolled accumulation of blood cells. Leukemia is divided into four categories: myelogenous or lymphocytic, each of which can be acute or chronic. The terms myelogenous or lymphocytic denote the cell type involved. Thus, the four major types of leukemia are:

Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia
Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
Acute Myelogenous Leukemia
Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia

Acute leukemia is a rapidly progressing disease that results in the accumulation of immature, functionless cells in the marrow and blood. The marrow often can no longer produce enough normal red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Anemia, a deficiency of red cells, develops in virtually all leukemia patients. The lack of normal white cells impairs the body’s ability to fight infections. A shortage of platelets results in bruising and easy bleeding.
Chronic leukemia progresses more slowly and allows greater numbers of more mature, functional cells to be made.

KarlGauss · January 14, 2004, 5:11am

Just to emphasize what DDG said, the major consequence of having leukemia is that the normal function of the bone marrow is inhibited. So, there will be too few white cells and/or too few platelets being produced. Since white cells are essential to fight off germs and since platelets are needed for blood clotting, this can lead to overwhelming (and fatal) infection and spontaneous (and fatal) bleeding respectively.

dwyr · January 15, 2004, 1:59am

In in the acute leukemias especially, the defective cells are overproduced to a large extent. A normal white count is around 5,000 to 10,000. I’ve seen white counts in leukemia patients as high as 600,000. This actually makes the blood too viscous to flow properly, leading to other problems. Or some defective white cells will start pumping out abnormal proteins in great quantities also affecting blood viscosity, etc.