Investigation on the prevalence of leukemia in North West Frontier Province of Pakistan

A research project was carried out at Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine (IRNUM) Peshawar, in order to investigate the prevalence of different types of leukemias in North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, during 2001. During this study 60 leukemia patients admitted at IRNUM were investigated. It was found that acute leukemia was more prevalent than chronic leukemia as 90% of total investigations were of acute type. Male patients were 76.6% compared to 23.3% female patients, while most of the patients were below the age of 20. Subtypes study of acute leukemia revealed that ALL-L1 (13 times) was more prevalent than ALL-L2 while no case was registered for ALL-L3. In AML subtypes, M1 and M2 subtypes were more frequent in patients than its other subtypes. AML-M1 was twice more prevalent than AML-M2. No case was registered for AMLM6 while AML-M1, AML-M4 and AML-M5 were found to be less prevalent. [Turk J Cancer 2005;35(3):119-122]. INTRODUCTION Cancer in all forms is causing about 12% of deaths throughout the world. In the developed world, cancer is the second leading cause of death, next to cardiovascular disease, accounting for 21% (2.5 million) of mortality. In developing world, it ranks 3 as a cause of death and accounts for 9.5% (3.8 million) of all deaths (1). The term leukemia usually refers to white blood cells malignancies; a rare case arising from red blood cells precursors is erythroleukemia, also termed as DiGuglielmo’s disease (2). Leukemias contain types and subtypes. Acute leukemia consists of malignant disorders that are rapidly fatal if left untreated but are potentially curable with appropriate therapy. They are characterized by sudden uncontrolled growth of immature hemopoietic cells at the expense of normal marrow function (3). Chronic myelocytic leukemia is a clonal disorder of pluripotent cells and is one of the myeloproliferative disorders (4,5). Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a neoplasm resulting from proliferation of a single clone with heterogeneity of its own frozen at an early stage of lymphocyte differentiation and maturation (6). Acute leukemia is further classified according to the nature of predominant cells by FAB (FrenchAmerican-British co-operative) group (7,8). Acute Myelocytic Leukemia (AML) further contains six subtypes (9,10). Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) occurs at any age but is more prevalent in children under the age of fifteen. Lymphocytes are unable to fully mature, and crowd out regular blood cells. It is subdivided into three subtypes (7). MUHAMMAD HAMAYUN, SUMERA AFZAL KHAN, WAZIR MUHAMMAD 1 Quaid-e-Azam University, Department of Biological Sciences, 2 Pakistan Institute of Engineering & Applied Sciences (PIEAS),