Study Links Rise in Secondary Blood Cancer to Prior Cancer Treatments
NEW DELHI — A population-based study from Japan has found a steady rise in cases of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer that can develop after treatment for other cancers, particularly breast cancer.
The findings, published in the journal Cancer, suggest that some cancer therapies may increase the risk of developing secondary cancers affecting the blood and bone marrow.
Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia, or tAML, is known to occur following chemotherapy or radiation, likely due to DNA damage caused by these treatments.
“The study provides an important step towards better understanding how the nature of tAML is changing with the increasing number of cancer survivors,” said lead author Kenji Kishimoto of the Osaka International Cancer Institute.
Researchers analyzed data from the Osaka Cancer Registry covering patients diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia between 1990 and 2020. Of nearly 9,841 AML cases identified, 636, or about 6.5 percent, were classified as therapy-related.
The incidence of tAML increased from 0.13 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 0.36 per 100,000 in 2020, with its share among all AML cases nearly doubling over the period.
The most common prior cancers among patients who later developed tAML were other blood cancers, accounting for 23.1 percent of cases, followed by breast cancer at 14.6 percent, colorectal cancer at 11.5 percent, and gastric cancer at 8.7 percent.
The study also found shifts in underlying cancer patterns over time, with breast cancer becoming a more prominent precursor to tAML, while cases linked to gastric cancer declined.
Researchers said the findings highlight the need for continued monitoring of long-term risks among cancer survivors as treatment outcomes improve and survival rates increase. (Source: IANS)
