What are the basic facts about acute myeloid leukemia?
Acute myeloid leukemia is the most common form of adult leukemia and the second most common childhood leukemia accounting for more than 10,000 cases annually in the U.S. In this type of cancer, the myeloid cells of the blood and bone marrow grow uncontrollably, crowding out and destroying normal blood cells. Standard therapies include chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation, which replaces the diseased bone marrow with healthy marrow. Overall, AML can be cured in up to 50 percent of patients without FLT3 mutations, but FLT3 mutant AML patients have a much lower cure rate.
