The most common treatment for leukemia is the chemotherapy.The therapy for children is produced by radiation and it is used only to treat leukemia in the central nervous system and the testicles.Unfortunately leukemia cannot be cured by surgery.A stem-cell transplant is the method which can be used.
Besides chemotherapy, immunotherapy can be successfully used.Therapeutic vaccines are used in human patients.Induction, consolidation and maintenance are the three phases of chemotherapy used in the treatment of acute lymphocytic leukemia and it develops over the course of a two to three year period.
In the case of chemotherapy induction and intensification are used for treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia.Chemotherapeutic drugs provided by the cerebrospinal fluid are received by patients throughout the course of treatment.In what concerns the cerebrospinal fluid chemotherapy discourage the spread of leukemia cells to the central nervous system.
Remission is the goal of induction.The body eliminates 99 percent of leukemia cells.The bone marrow is filled with normal hematopoietic stem cells.For most cases chemotherapy treatments last for about a month.For the patients with high-risk higher doses are used and for the acute myelogenous leukemia, different drugs are used.In both cases chemotherapy is continuously administered for ten consecutive days.
For inducing remission of acute promyelocytic leukemia are used retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide, after month of treatment patients survive induction.The person’s condition is critical until blood counts return to normal.Different treatments are required by chronic forms of the disease.The treatment is succesful by using the following medication:imatinib mesylate for patients with chronic myelogenousleukemia and cladribine and 2-deoxycoformycin which are both effective against hairy cell leukemia, a type of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Ten billion leukemia cells remain in the body after induction.The role of goals of consolidation referring to an intensification are to eliminate leukemia cells from locations such as the central nervous system and the testicles,where the cancer cells remains undetected by the immune system;the role of the cells being the one which reduces the number of leukemia cells remaining in the body.The last phase of treatment is the maintenance.Patients with low-risk and high-risk receive different drugs for leukemia in this case,but the drugs are used at lower doses than in the induction phase.
A relatively-new and complex treatment for leukemia is transplantation which consist in cells collected from cavities within bones where blood cells form or from the blood.For children with a poor chance of survival and for whom the treatment relapses the transplantation is used.Blood-forming stem cells are collected from patient or a donor with a nearly identical cell type.In this case the cells are frozen for storage.If the umbilical cord blood is available it can be use as a source of stem cells.
To kill all cancerous cells the patient follows a treatment with a very high dose of chemotherapy and radiation.All normal bone marrow cells are killed due to the does of chemotherapy and radiation.Then the bone marrow is repopulated by the stored stem cells which return to the body.To treat disease and also to maintain the immunity of the body immunotherapy is used.For the patients with leukemia interferon alfa which is an immune-system activator produced as a drug for bolstering the immune system of the body is successfully used.
The custom-made and duplicated antibody is produced in the laboratory and it is designed to interfere with malignant cells only which can also reduce the number of disease cells.Mylotarg is the monoclonal antibody has been approved for treatment of adults with refractory acute myelogenous leukemia.The improved technics and the science evolution have helped the people to find out different ways of destroying leukemia.