Treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia

This is most commonly seen in adult age group (40-60 years). As with all chronic leukaemia, chronic myeloid leukaemia also progress slowly. The possible out comes of a non treated disease are,

·         Blast crisis

·         Myelofibrosis

·         Death – within 3-4 years

Patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia are treated with “imatinib” Ninety five percent of the patients responds very well to this drug and therefore has a good reputation in treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia. It can be continued for the rest of the life, and good news is that its side effects are also mild and most patients can tolerate them very well. Some of such side effects are listed below.

·         Nausea

·         Headache

·         Rashes

·         Cytopenia

Very few people may develop resistant to imatinib and those patients are treated with second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors, dasatinib, and nilotinib.

The next method of treatment is Stem cell transplantation, which I will describe in my next post.

References : Kumar P and Clark M, 2009. Clinical Medicine. 7th ed.