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Promising odds for children with leukaemia

02/07/2008

About three-quarters of children with leukaemia will be cured of the disease, according to a new method of assessing survival rates.

It is the first time that anyone has estimated childhood leukaemia cure trends over time.

Rather than looking at five-year survival rates, researchers at the London School of Hygiene defined 'cure' as the point when the life expectancy of children diagnosed with leukaemia returned to normal for their age and sex.

About 500 new cases of childhood leukaemia are diagnosed each year in the UK.

The cure rate for the disease has increased from 25 per cent in the early 1970s to 68 per cent in the early 1990s – and this figure is predicted to rise to 73 per cent for children diagnosed more recently.

Researchers behind the latest statistics argue that the substantial increase in survival and 'cure' is largely due to improvements in treatment and care.

Senior author Professor Michel Coleman said: "Our study suggests that the development of new treatments for leukaemia, combined with clinical trials to refine treatment strategies, has been effective in curing more children with leukaemia.

"But alongside the more intensive treatments for leukaemia that increase the chance of cure, we need to reduce the risk of longer-term adverse effects that children may suffer in later life, which can include recurrence of cancer in other parts of the body."

Commenting on the research, Edward Copisarow, chief executive of Children with Leukaemia, said it makes an "important contribution to the way the success of childhood leukaemia treatment is evaluated".

"Estimating cure and determining for how long patients should be monitored is a valuable step beyond the arbitrary success measures of survival five or ten years after diagnosis, because it provides a better sense of the long-term success we are having in fighting this disease," he explained.

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, added: "Although the majority of children with leukaemia can be cured, around a third don't respond well to current treatments and our efforts must focus on finding new treatments so that every child can survive a diagnosis of this disease.

"We will also need to continue long-term monitoring of childhood leukaemia survivors to document any effects the treatment may have in later life. This will help doctors to improve treatments for future patients."