Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML): Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment

Acute myeloid leukemia is the most common adult acute leukemia, but its etiology in individual patients is poorly understood. An increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia may be inherited (through congenital hematologic diseases and syndromes or germline disorders) or be acquired due to a lifetime of exposure to environmental or chemical agents, or genotoxic stress. In this collection, the authors explore risk factors for acute myeloid leukemia, newer epidemiologic studies on the connections between these risks and clinical phenotypes and outcomes of the disease. The subsequent chapter evaluates different prognostic factors and stratifications of risk that have been published in the attempt to assess the influence of acute myeloid leukemia progression on the overall survival of myelodysplastic syndromes patients, evaluating them in a population-based registry. Many acute myeloid leukemia patients cannot tolerate standard chemotherapy due to its high toxicity. A milder therapy for acute myeloid leukemia has long been sought after, and until now the only successful clinical application has been all-trans-retinoic acid-based therapy for just one subtype of acute myeloid leukemia, acute promyelocytic leukaemia. The concluding chapter aims to address other therapeutic candidates.