If leukemia is the overproduction of leucocytes, why is it bad?

Question

If you have more white blood cells don't you have more white blood cells to fight off infection, strengthening your immune system. Or is leukemia the overproduction of defective leucocytes which would instead weaken the immune system?

Answer 1

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Leukemia is indeed an overproduction of white blood cells, but you are right that they are defective.

Acute leukemia produces alot of immature WBCs which cannot fight infection and have the side effect of 'clogging up' the areas in the bone marrow which produce them. This means that the bone marrow cannot create any healthy WBCs and can also lead to a decrease in other blood constituents such as red blood cells and platelets.

This leaves the patient with a poorly functioning immune system, anemia and poorly clotting blood.

The large amount of WBCs can also get clogged in other organs causing problems there too.

Chronic leukemia doesn't cause alot of immature WBCs, but it does create alot of non-functioning ones which will affect the persons immune system.

Answer 2

If you have more white blood cell it doesn't mean you have leukemia. It could be an infection or anemiaor other things, forgive me if I'm wrong. I had that several times and I went to a different doctor and asked him for a second opinion and he asked for all records from the other doctor, that happened a long time ago. I think I had anemia. He gave me several shot and I'm OK. However if a person have leukemia, it means cancer in the blood. They have more and more treatment to these day, for instant the bone marrow is not producing enough white blood cell but with the bone marrow transplant many peope live. I will do more research in this matter. Ga

Source(s): This is my experience. However I will make some research about that. Ga

Answer 3

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RE:

If leukemia is the overproduction of leucocytes, why is it bad?

If you have more white blood cells don't you have more white blood cells to fight off infection, strengthening your immune system. Or is leukemia the overproduction of defective leucocytes which would instead weaken the immune system?

Source(s): leukemia overproduction leucocytes bad: https://tinyurl.im/4VQAG

Answer 4

Leukemia is a malignancy (a cancer). The leukocytes are, indeed, "defective," and in the most simplistic terms they don't do anything "helpful" in terms of immunity. Leukemia isn't the same thing as leukocytosis (high number of white cells, without an implicit connotation of an underlying malignancy). Leukocytosis is most commonly seen with infection, indeed, as the host's immune response.

Answer 5

Symptoms of Leukaemia depend on the type. There are 4 main types.

AML Acute Myeloid Leukaemia

CML Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia

ALL Acute Lymphoid Leukaemia

CLL Chronic Lymphoid Leukaemia

Acute = Rapid development

Chronic= slower to develop.

Like all cancers, leukaemias involve genetic changes to the cell. Activation of oncogenes, loss of tumour supressor genes, numerous chromosomal changes. All malignant cells derive from a single mutant stem cell.

Acute leukaemias are due to a block in cell maturation, which results in decreased cell death. Mature cells have a limited lifespan, while immature blast cells have a lower rate of cell death.

Acute Leukaemias,

Characterised by large numbers of myeloid blast cells (AML) or lymphoblasts (ALL) in bone marrow, therefore "undifferentiated Leukaemias".

Symptoms.

typical symptoms are due to supression of normal bone marrow haempoiesis causing polycytopenia.

Anaemia, weakness, shortness of breath, bruising, bleeding, epistaxis, bleeding gums, due to thrombocytopenia.

Recurrent infections due to neutropenia.

Chronic Leukaemias

CLL

Characterised by large numbers of mature lymphocytes in bone marrow and peripheral blood.

Symptoms,

Recurrent infections due to neutropenia and poor lymphocyte function.

anaemia,

Lymph node enlargement.

Hepatosplenomegaly.

CML

Neutrophilia, VERY HIGH WHITE CELL COUNT.

Philadephia Chromosome.

BCR-ABL gene rearrangement.

Symptoms

Anaemia,

Night fever/sweats

Splenomegaly.

For treatment information, See Kumar and Clark Clinical Medicine (5th Edition). You can view it online.

Source(s): Uni module guide.