Clinical Edge

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Risk of AML and MDS After First Cancers

Are type of cancer and radiation status informative?

Risks of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and/or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are known to increase after cancer treatments. Knowing the type of first cancer and whether it was treated with radiation can improve estimates of whether development of AML or MDS in this setting is due to background versus other processes. This according to analyses of data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Researchers found:

• Patients with prostate cancer receiving radiation therapy have increased relative risk (RR) of AML and MDS that peaks in 1.5 to 2.5 years

• Patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), lung, and breast first cancers have the highest RR for AML and MDS over the next 1 to 12 years. These increased RRs are radiation specific for lung and breast cancer but not for NHL.

• There was a marked excess risk of acute promyelocytic leukemia in patients receiving radiation therapy.

Citation: Radivoyevitch T, Sachs RK, Gale RP, et al. Defining AML and MDS second cancer risk dynamics after diagnoses of first cancers treated or not with radiation. [Published online ahead of print October 13, 2015]. Leukemia. doi: 10.1038/leu.2015.258.