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Leukemia
Leukemia is a blood cancer caused by a rise in the number of white blood cells in your body.
Blood has three types of cells: white blood cells that fight infection, red blood cells that carry oxygen, and platelets that help blood clot. Every day, your bone marrow makes billions of new blood cells, and most of them are red cells. When you have leukemia, your body makes more white cells than it needs. Those white blood cells crowd out the red and platelets that your body needs to be healthy. These leukemia cells can’t fight infection the way normal white blood cells do. And because there are so many of them, they start to affect the way your organs work. Over time, you may not have enough red blood cells to supply oxygen, enough platelets to clot your blood, or enough normal white blood cells to fight infection.
Approximately every 3 minutes, one person in the US is diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma. An estimated 62,770 people in the US are expected to be diagnosed with leukemia in 2024.
Source of information: www.allbloodcancers.org