What causes acute leukemia?
Acute leukaemias are caused by some damage, either from your own body or from some exposure, to the stem cells or to the white blood cell precursors, causing the origins of white blood cells to get damaged to some extent. The DNA material, the genetic material gets damaged. That leads to an abnormal cell that propagates itself or reproduces itself to produce a whole population of cells that are abnormal. This abnormal cell population then causes havoc by making white blood cells that don’t really work well. There are different mutations that apply to different sub-types of leukaemias. The acute myelogenous leukaemias, or the AMLs, have many sub-types and there are many genetic mutations that can appear or cause this syndrome to happen. Acute lymphoid leukaemia, or ALL, which is another type of acute leukaemia, also has specific genetic mutations that can lead to this type of syndrome.
