Acute Lympocytic leukemia

OBJECTIVES: Every day 43 children are newly diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately, almost 90% of these childhood cancer patients will survive. However, 60-90% of these survivors will experience late effects, health problems that occur months or years after treatment has ended. Late effects could occur as a result of the disease, its treatment, and patient-related factors. The two main objectives of this research are to: 1) Examine the existence of all web-based resources for childhood cancer survivors with acute lymphocytic leukemia which focus on medical and psychological aspects of late effects, and 2) Create an innovative website specifically designed to fill this void...

This article summarizes the tremendous progress currently achieved in understanding the molecular basis of the pediatric acute leukemias. The article is organized from the perspective of the most frequently encountered pediatric acute leukemia genetic abnormalities in a molecular diagnostics laboratory setting. For each specific entity, the basic molecular biology, putative mechanisms of leukemogenesis, detection methods, and clinical significance are reviewed. Emphasis is placed on discussing the fusion genes generated from common nonrandom chromosomal translocations in B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), although brief summaries of T-lineage and myeloid leukemia, as well as the use of the antigen receptor gene rearrangement for residual disease monitoring in acute lympocytic leukemia are also presented...

67 children affected with acute lympocytic leukemia were immunologically evaluated for lymphocytic markers, serum immunoglobulins and delayed hypersensitivity skin tests at the onset, in remission and after cessation of therapy. E, EA rosettes and surface Ig assayed significantly lower in leukemic children than in matched controls, except for three cases of T-cell leukemia in which E rosettes were very high. After cessation of therapy almost normal results were obtained. As for serum Ig, the only abnormal finding was that of low IgM during therapy...