New Delhi, April 6 (IANS). Can the therapy being used for cancer treatment increase the risk of cancer? A report published on Monday brings forth such a horrifying truth. A population-based study in Japan has shown that rates of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (TAML) have increased in recent years. Especially after breast cancer treatment!
The results, published online by Wiley Online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, showed that some therapies used to treat cancer increase the risk of later cancer through direct effects on the blood. That is, after treatment, the risk of second type of cancer (secondary primary cancer) is increasing compared to the general population.
“TAML” is an aggressive cancer of the blood and bone marrow that occurs after chemotherapy or radiation for a previous primary cancer; One reason for this could be the damage caused to DNA by these treatments.”
“This study is an important step toward 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.
Are the cases of “TAML” increasing among cancer survivors as well as after cancer treatment? To explore this question, researchers analyzed data from the Osaka Cancer Registry. This data was related to patients from Japan who were diagnosed with AML between 1990 and 2020.
Of approximately 9,841 patients with AML, 636 (6.5 percent) had TAML. The annual incidence rate of TAML increased from 0.13 per 100,000 population in 1990 to 0.36 per 100,000 population in 2020. The proportion of TAML cases among total AML cases almost doubled.
The primary cancer treated before TAML occurred was another form of blood cancer (23.1 percent); This is followed by breast cancer (14.6 percent), colorectal cancer (11.5 percent) and gastric cancer (8.7 percent).
According to the study, there was a clear change in the incidence of primary cancer over time; There was a significant increase in breast cancer cases, while a clear decrease was seen in the cases of gastric cancer.
–IANS
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