Herbal Medicine and Plants in the Treatment of Leukemia

2. Leukemia

Leukemia also known as blood cancer develops in the tissues where formation of blood cells takes place that includes bone marrow and lymphatic system (Figure 1), it is the top 10 cancer which is responsible for the cause of many deaths worldwide. This malignancy involves the abnormalities of white blood cells, which without any abnormalities are infection fighters and grow and divide orderly way as the need of the body. Some of the symptoms of these blood related malignancies are fever, fatigue, severe infections, losing weight, swollen lymph nodes, easy bleeding, and others. The development of this disease occurs in the spongy tissue in the bone marrow in the bone cavity where blood cells are produced from the hematopoietic stem cells that derives to myeloid cell and lymphoid cells. Based on the cell type leukemia can be classified into myeloid leukemia that develops in the myeloid cells and lymphocytic leukemia that develops in the lymphoid cells, based on progression it can be classified into two types acute leukemia in which the progression is fast and chronic leukemia in which the progression and propagation is slow. There are four types of leukemia, Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and, Chronic lymphoblastic leukemia (CLL). Treatment of leukemia can be carried out by chemotherapy, targeted therapy, radiation therapy, bone marrow transplant and others. It is an aggressive disease which is related with factors of both extrinsic and intrinsic origin like alteration of the genome and environmental factors. The extrinsic factors are mainly like exposure to radiations, chemicals or biological agents like benzene are associated with leukemia occurrence, some more factors related with lifestyle is also found to be related with the cause of leukemia like smoking habit.

Figure 1.

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