New hope for high risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children
Posted on 12. Oct, 2009 by admin in Health
According to Canadian researchers a therapy for the high-risk chromosome-positive Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), in children actually increases survival rate in them.
The study, a phase-2 trial published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, reports of findings involved with over 20 North American centers who studied the effects of therapy in 92 child patients aged between 1 and 21.
The therapy involved the drug whose chemical name is imatinib or imatinib mesylate (available as Gleevec or Glivec) and long standing use of drug imatinib for say 2-1/2 years actually increased the survival rates to about 87 per cent. The drug imatinib doesn’t leave many adverse effects and well tolerated,” according to Dr. Kirk Schultz, the lead of the team from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Kirk et al., gave imatinib in conjunction with other chemotherapy and they have found a synergistic reaction to increase survival rates. They believe the study needs followup research.
