Overall, about 70 percent of children with ALL and about 40 percent of adult patients with AML will go on to be cured of their leukemia. A cure is commonly defined as surviving five years without a relapse of leukemia.
Leukemias generally result from an acquired (not inherited) genetic injury to the DNA of a single cell in the bone marrow.The effects are: the accelerated growth and blockage in the maturation of cells, resulting in the accumulation of cells called "leukemic blasts," which do not function as normal blood cells; and a failure to produce normal marrow cells, leading to a deficiency of red cells (anemia), platelets and normal white cells.
Blast cells are normally produced by bone marrow and usually develop into mature blood cells, comprising about 1 percent of all marrow cells. In leukemia, the blasts do not mature properly and accumulate in the bone marrow. In AML, these are called myeloblasts while in ALL they are known as lymphoblasts.
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