Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Treatment
Chronic myelogenous leukemia is an uncommon type of blood cancer that develops when genetic changes occur in the blood cells. Many people with CML don't notice symptoms as they are in the "chronic" stage of the disease; it is diagnosed only after a blood test or when the disease goes into an accelerated phase. In the past, the prognosis for CML wasn't rosy, but the development of new targeted therapies has changed CML treatment completely.-
Stages
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Chronic myelogenous leukemia has different stages, and treatment differs depending on what stage the patient is in. The majority of CML patients have exactly what the name of the disease suggests: a chronic condition that doesn't severely affect the functioning of the blood cells. Treatment of these patients involves eliminating "deformed" cells. Patients in more severe stages, such as the accelerated phase or the "blast crisis" phase, have highly abnormal blood cell counts and are vulnerable to infection. These patients need to be "normalized" back to the chronic phase of CML.
Gleevec
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Imatinib mesylate, better known as Gleevec, is the first line of treatment for people with chronic myelogenous leukemia at any stage. The drug is comparatively new (it was approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration in 2001) and is more efficient than past chemotherapy treatments for CML. Gleevec is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, meaning that it helps inhibit enzymes that spur the growth of cancerous blood cells. A 2006 study of Gleevec published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that CML patients taking the drug had an 89 percent survival rate over a period of five years.
Other Treatments
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Since Gleevec came onto the market, other drugs have been developed that act in a similar enzyme-blocking way. Dasatinib (trade name Sprycel) and nilotinib (trade name Tasigna) are also used for chronic myelogenous leukemia patients. If a patient is in a more serious accelerated or "blast crisis" phase, he or she can also receive the drug hydroxyurea (trade name Hydrea), which lowers white blood cell levels.
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