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Leukemia, alias blood cancer!
There are many folk sayings that it is an incurable disease, but it is not the case. With the development of medicine, leukemiaWith the nemesis, the survival rate is greatly improved, and the recovery is basically the same as the normal person.
strong>What is leukemia?
Leukemia, a cancer that arises from stem cells in the bone marrow.
Stem cells are like a baby. Although their functions have not yet developed, they have great potential. Stem cells in the bone marrow can differentiate into Different kinds of blood cells such as red blood cells, platelets, white blood cells (immune cells), etc.
But sometimes stem cells go wrong in the process of specialization, and harmful mutations occur in the cell’s DNA, and these mutated cells (cancer cells), begin to fail Controlled replication, and finally a large number of cancer cells crowd the bone marrow, causing stem cells to fail to differentiate normally, red blood cells that deliver oxygen, platelets that stop bleeding, and white blood cells that clear pathogens can’t work properly.
leukemia What are the risk factors?
While it’s unclear what causes leukemia, the following factors greatly increase the risk.
Chemical Factors
Exposure to chemicals: benzene; chemical drugs: cyclophosphamide, chloramphenicol, bismorpholine, etc. The case of leukemia due to excessive formaldehyde in house decoration is one of them.
physical factors
Ionizing radiation: X-rays, gamma rays, atomic bomb radiation, etc.
genetic factors
Studies have found that there are certain genetic factors in the formation factors of leukemia.
Virus infection
After a lot of experiments and studies, viral infection is one of the causes of leukemia, and the most common one is the infection of T lymphocyte type I virus.
What is the difference between acute and chronic leukemia?
There are acute and chronic leukemias. If there is no intervention for acute leukemia, the remaining time is from a few months to half a year, and for chronic it is about five years.
Acute Leukemia
Acute onset, mainly manifested as infection, anemia, and bleeding (gum, epistaxis, or skin ecchymosis and petechiae), accompanied by dizziness and fatigue.
chronic leukemia
Fatigue, weight loss, abdominal distension, poor appetite, or major lymph nodes, the specific symptoms are not obvious, need to check the blood routine to find.
According to statistics, children with leukemia under 10 years old in my country The incidence of leukemia is 3-4/100,000, of which acute leukemia accounts for 90-95%, and childhood leukemia is the second leading cause of death in children under the age of 15.
Traditional leukemia treatment, easy to relapse and difficult to cure p>
Intravenous chemotherapy: chemical drug therapy, by destroying abnormally proliferating cells, rebuilds the hematopoietic function of the bone marrow, but it also easily damages healthy cells. Big side effects.
Bone marrow transplantation: Restoring hematopoietic and immune function by transplanting normal hematopoietic stem cells Different reaction.
Targeted therapy: Compared with chemotherapy, it is more targeted and can reduce damage to normal cells.
intravenous chemotherapy , Although targeted therapy can control leukemia in the short term, it is easy to relapse and difficult to cure.
It is worth noting that the treatment of leukemia by radiotherapy and chemotherapy may cause a certain degree of damage to the testis and ovary, thereby affecting sperm and egg production. quality.
Immune cell therapy with small side effects and obvious effects
As a new method of leukemia treatment, immune cell therapy with less side effects and obvious therapeutic effect has achieved impressive results.
2017 , Two CAR-T immunotherapies for the treatment of leukemia have been approved by the US FDA for marketing.
Kymriah is used to treat relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) aged 3-25 years;< /strong>
Yescarta is used to treat certain types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
CAR-T Cell Drug—Kymriah
Principle of CAR-T immune cell therapy
By collecting the patient’s own Blood, isolate the T lymphocytes in it, and then apply genetic engineering technology to modify them. The T cells are transformed from “ordinary soldiers” to “super soldiers”. After transforming into CAR-T cells, they are then infused back into the body for accurate identification. And eliminate tumor cells in the body.
-T cell therapy can make patients with advanced or relapsed leukemia in remission or even recovery.
In May 2010, 5-year-old Emily in the United States was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She successfully spent 5 years of recovery, and in 2021, at the age of 16, she is in very good health and has achieved cancer-free survival for 9 consecutive years.
In early 2019, Professor Zhang Tongcun of Wuhan University of Science and Technology used CAR-T cells to successfully cure a girl with relapsed leukemia. After three years of treatment After observation, the test results showed that the leukemia cells in the girl had disappeared, and the CAR-T cells persisted.
With rapid development and the unremitting efforts of scientists, dendritic cells, natural killer cells, CAR-T and other immune cells are gradually moving towards clinical patients, bringing them more new choices and new hope!
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