Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a clonal, malignant disease of hematopoietic tissue characterized by accumulation of abnormal cells, mainly leukaemic blasts in bone marrow and impaired production of normal hematopoietic cells. Leukaemia was discovered in 1845, roughly at the same time by two doctors, Rudolph Virchow, a young Berlin pathologist and a Scottish pathologist, John Hughes Bennett. T...

This Athena case describes a young man with sudden onset eruption of localised plaques on the right neck in setting treatments for recently diagnosed acute myeloid leukaemia.

CONTEXT More than 400,000 workers annually receive a measurable radiation dose and may be at increased risk of radiation-induced leukaemia. It is unclear whether leukaemia risk is elevated with protracted, low-dose exposure. OBJECTIVE We conducted a meta-analysis examining the relationship between protracted low-dose ionising radiation exposure and leukaemia. DATA SOURCES Reviews by the Nat...

Virus infections have been thought to be involved in the development of childhood leukaemia. In order to address this issue we determined, in a case-control study, the prevalence of antibodies to viruses infecting blood or bone-marrow cells [Epstein-Barr virsus (EBV), human herpes virus type 6 (HHV-6), parvovirus B19] as well as to the human virus known for its tumour-suppressive properties, th...

BACKGROUND A previous study has suggested an increased incidence rate of leukaemia from 1978 to 1992 in people aged 0 to 24 years and living in the vicinity of the La Hague nuclear waste reprocessing plant without considering age and cytological type. SETTING The Nord Cotentin region (France) and the island of Alderney (United Kingdom). STUDY OBJECTIVE To describe the occurrence of leukaemi...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the incidence and aetiology of secondary leukaemia after childhood cancer in Britain. DESIGN Cohort study and a case-control study. SETTING Britain and population based National Register of Childhood Tumours. SUBJECTS Cohort of 16,422 one year survivors of childhood cancer diagnosed in Britain between 1962 and 1983, among whom 22 secondary leukaemias were observed...

The clinical, haematological, morphological and histological features of a series of 22 patients presenting with splenic lymphoma with circulating villous lymphocytes were assessed and compared with those of patients with other forms of chronic B cell leukaemia in an attempt to differentiate this condition from hairy cell leukaemia, prolymphocytic leukaemia, and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, w...

In order to assess the systemic prognosis of children with leukaemic ocular involvement, 63 of 131 patients admitted to hospital with acute leukaemia were evaluated ophthalmically. A total of 28 of 63 showed ophthalmic involvement and were followed up for up to 84 months. Twenty seven of 28 patients (96.4%) died within 28 months after the onset of ocular involvement and within 83 months after t...

With the prolongation of survival in patients with acute leukaemia the incidence of central nervous system involvement has shown a coincidental increase (Evans et al., 1970). Its actual frequency, however, remains difficult to estimate, for symptoms and signs may be minimal and meningeal leukaemia often occurs during bone marrow remission. Reports on patients with acute leukaemia and signs of r...