What is Leukemia ?

Leukemia is a blood disease that affects the production of leucocytes (the white cells) making their proliferation impossible to control, crowding out the normal blood cells.

These abnormal leukocytes are immature cells (blasts), which don’t function properly and overpopulate the normal bone marrow; they then invade the blood stream.

The term Leukemia, comes from the Greek word "leukos", which means "white blood". The bone marrow is severely affected and becomes incapable of maintaining a normal production of red blood cells (erythrocytes) and platelets.

In the same time, the white cell production becomes so rapid that these cells can’t reach the maturity level required for their role in fighting infections.

The Leukemic cells infiltrate all the major organs of the body, sometimes causing these organs to malfunction or fail. The kidneys can be affected; the liver and spleen can increase in size (hepatosplenomegaly).
Normally the spleen functions as a blood filter, getting read of the old erythrocytes and platelets.
When the spleen increases in size, this function becomes excessive and healthy erythrocytes and platelets are eliminated, decreasing their number even more.

As the Leukemia progresses, the entire blood stream can be invaded by immature leukemic cells. If the disease remains untreated, the patient becomes easily tired and susceptible to excessive bleeding and frequent infections until the body loses all its defense mechanisms making every minor injury or infection serious.

Leukemia may be fatal. The causes of death may be internal bleeding due to decreased platelet number or, more frequently, due to viral or bacterial infections, which could have been normally fought by the healthy white cells.

The evolution of the disease can vary with the type of Leukemia and the age of the white cells initially affected.

T cell Leukemia

Alexandra was diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia: T cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

There are a number of viruses that can infect human lymphocytes, such as Epstein-Barr, human herpes virus 8, cytomegalovirus and retroviruses. The infected leukocytes proliferate in the blood or nervous system in 5% of the infected people. One group will develop myelopathy. Other people will develop uveitis, infectious dermatitis etc. The infections are chronic and the patients are asymptomatic.

More information about Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Alexandra

During the treatment

Medical documents

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