- NEW DELHI — Late
diagnoses and high costs are driving cases of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) --
an aggressive form of blood and bone marrow cancer, said health experts.
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- After the US and China, India reportedly had the highest
number of cases of AML in 2021.
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- According to health experts, early screening, accurate
diagnosis and timely initiation of treatment are extremely important to improve
survival rates.
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- “We lose critical time because AML is detected late in our
country and often masquerades as fatigue or infection. By the time the right
tests are done, the disease has often progressed to a stage where treatment
options are limited or less effective,” Dr. Ranjit Sahoo, D.M. (Medical
Oncology) Professor (Additional) at All India Institute of Medical Sciences
(AIIMS), told IANS.
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- While acute leukaemia can be detected by a simple blood
test, “the treatment of AML is carried out at tertiary centres and the cost of
supportive treatment is high,” the expert said.
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- For many patients, the onset is silent, the symptoms of AML
are vague, and the window for intervention is tragically narrow.
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- Many patients also delay treatment due to financial
constraints or seek care in late stages when treatment is less effective.
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- “AML, while rare among all haematological malignancies, is
the most feared one. It has an excellent chemotherapy combination for control
of disease, including deep remission (control, not cure), but is fraught with
complications, including life-threatening ones due to severe infections and
bone marrow suppression,” said Dr. Abhay A. Bhave, a haematologist, from a
Mumbai-based hospital.
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- Bhave noted that “AML can be a relapsing, relentless disease
based on the genes that cause this disease”.
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- Traditional chemotherapy, the mainstay of AML treatment, has
often been poorly tolerated, especially in older patients. However, the
emergence of targeted therapies -- which act on specific genetic mutations
driving the disease -- has dramatically improved remission rates, reduced
toxicity, and enhanced quality of life for patients globally.
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- However, these are often expensive; and bone marrow
transplantation is also not easy to obtain, the doctors said.
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- Dr. Punit L Jain, a leukaemia specialist at a Mumbai-based
hospital stated that 60 per cent of AML patients arrive in advanced stages with
infection and bleeding, impairing treatment methods.
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- The experts suggested integrating AML into the national
cancer control strategy and expanding access to diagnostics may be necessary to
boost awareness as well as treatment outcomes. They also called for including
AML-targeted therapies in Ayushman Bharat and private insurance schemes to ease
out-of-pocket expenditure for patients; and to support clinical research and
trials.