Blood cancer is called acute myeloid leukemia in the medical world. Its acronym is AML. Acute means causing problems in a short period of time. Chronic means a problem that continues for a long time. Blood is the most important liquid organ in our body. Just like the heart, liver, brain and kidneys are important, the health of our blood organ is also important.
Such blood contains blood water (plasma) and mixed blood cells such as red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. All these spring from the marrow inside the large bones. Within our bone marrow are stem cells that make new blood cells. From them, every second, new blood cells appear to renew the old blood cells. These blood stem cells
give rise to two types of blood cells.
First type
Lymphocytes – These are the basic cells of our immune system.
Second type
Myeloid cells
It is from these myeloid cells that red blood cells are formed. It contains hemoglobin. It is through these cells that oxygen reaches the cells throughout the body. White blood cells and platelets (helps in blood clotting) are formed.
What happens in AML?
These myeloid cells begin to overproduce and over time the myeloid cells increase from the average normal cells, and the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in the blood decrease greatly. Eventually the bone marrow becomes completely inactive. For such people
– Frequent bacterial infections
– Body slimming
– Anemia-like symptoms appear.
Once the disease is diagnosed, drugs are given intravenously to destroy the problematic myeloid cells. This is what we call chemotherapy. Also available now are modern and cost effective drugs like monoclonal antibodies. For some, the disease is controlled by this treatment. But some people don’t have control. They will be given radiation treatment to the bone marrow. This will control the production of cancerous myeloid cells in the bone marrow.
The treatment for this disease is called bone marrow transplant or blood stem cell transplant. This means that when stem cells are taken from someone else’s normal or healthy bone marrow and re-infused into the patient, the bone marrow regenerates and starts making new cells in good condition. For this, stem cells can be obtained through a blood vessel, similar to how we get a blood donation from a normal person.
The person who is going to donate stem cells will be given an injection to grow the stem cells a few days before. Then only the stem cells are extracted from his blood and given to the leukemia patient. Once the supplied stem cells go into the patient’s body and start working, the situation will improve. However, it is not as simple as it sounds in reality.
When another person’s stem cells are transplanted into another person, this causes the recipient’s body to reject them as not being our own. Sometimes there is a chance that the patient’s immune system resists and does nothing. We call this alternative marrow failure. Thus, there is a chance that the stem cell transplant will be rejected.
When this happens, all the cells in the blood are greatly reduced in size. So the patient is in a situation where he can survive only if he receives continuous blood transfusions. Blood donation is required for the welfare of such patients. Let’s keep donating blood.