Acute Myeloid Leukemia — Many Diseases, Many Treatments — NEJM

Acute Myeloid Leukemia — Many Diseases, Many Treatments — NEJM
EDITORIAL
Acute Myeloid Leukemia — Many Diseases, Many Treatments
Elihu Estey, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2016; 375:2094-2095November 24, 2016DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1611424

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This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below.
Patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) generally receive stereotypical treatment.1 For example, young patients receive cytarabine for 7 days and an anthracycline for 3 days (known as “7+3 induction”). Thus treated, some groups, predictably, have an approximately 50% chance of “cure” (“favorable risk”) whereas others, also predictably, have a survival of 6 to 18 months (“unfavorable risk”). This nonrandom heterogeneity after homogeneous treatment suggests that, like pneumonia, AML is several diseases. Today, AML is primarily defined according to leukemia-cell karyotype and an increasing number of molecular aberrations.2 It follows that different types of AML should ideally be treated differently. This . . .
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SOURCE INFORMATION
From the Division of Hematology, University of Washington Medical Center, and the Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle.