A cancer you can treat with vitamin A

Quick post today -

Acute myelogenous leukemia. A leukemia is a cancer of the bone or bone marrow. Myelogenous means that the cancer itself produces a lot of myeloid cells, which are neutrophils, macrophages, platelets, eosinophils, basophils, red blood cells. However, because it is a cancer, these cells are not fully developed, and are still in their 'myeloblast' (precursor) stage which is undifferentiated. Acute means onset is quick/sudden.

There is a form of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML for short), that is responsive to VITAMIN A. This very specific cancer (M3 type) has a translocation between chromosomes 15 and 17. You give these patients vitamin A and it forces these myeloblast cells to go from just hanging out in this amorphous undifferentiated state, to develop into regular cells. This way these weird precursor cells develop and stop crowding out all the other cells, like red blood cells. So cool.

However, I just learned that this cancer has something called Auer rods in the myeloblasts (which I knew already) that have peroxidase in them (which I didn't know - think hydrogen peroxide and what it does - that is what peroxidase does). If you treat the cancer, you release this peroxidase into the blood stream and you get something called DIC. Have we made up a plethora of dirty mnemonics around DIC? Clearly.

DIC stands for disseminated intravascular coagulopathy. Here, you clot like crazy. So crazy that you use up all your clotting factors, and start bleeding and not clotting anymore. Good times.

Am homing in on the end of hematology, just have the drugs to do.

the journey continues.