The diagnosis of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia for Silvio Berlusconi dates back to two years ago. The exacerbation that led to his hospitalization at St. Raphael instead it goes back a few weeks. Thus we arrived at the hospitalization at the end of March and the tests which showed that «i White blood cells continued to rise» and the therapies to keep the disease at bay. The complication of a lung infection instead led to hospitalization. The treatment is carried out with the antibiotics. While for the chemotherapy to which the former prime minister submits, it will take a few days to see the results. Side effects are hair loss and nausea. Then there is also renal failurewhich appears to be under control for now. Now Berlusconi is a subject immunodepresso. And in these conditions, any complication can cause the clinical picture to change at any moment.
Il Cavaliere’s disease and its treatments
To let it be known that the diagnosis of the former prime minister dates back to a year ago is the news agency beraking latest news. The disease has a better prognosis than acute leukemia because it is less aggressive. Livio Paganodirector of geriatric hematology del Gemelli Polyclinic in Romeexplains today to Messenger that it is one myelodyspastic syndrome. That is, a blood disease characterized by an increase in monocytes, a component of the White blood cells produced by bone marrow. «In this type of hemopathies, explains the expert, myelodyspastic syndromes are pre-leukemic conditions» adds the professor Pagano. So we are not dealing with an acute form. And most importantly, transformation is not the norm. Patients like Berlusconi therefore usually have a better prognosis. They can be treated with effective medications. And they may have long-term survival prospects even if I’m at an advanced age.
Chemotherapy
The expert explains that chemotherapy is the necessary care: «The azacitidinea therapy dismissal which is administered subcutaneously for seven days a month. It must then be administered periodically. The goal is to bring healing to the bone marrow in long times. Hoping it’s not toxic. Instead, in the case of acute leukemia, shock treatment is used, the one by way intravenous. Among the side effects, Pagano explains that the patient may experiencepost chemotherapy aplasia. “It is a period of 15 days during which he has no defenses against infections because white blood cells are very low,” adds the doctor. «In these conditions they can develop infections of type bacterial o fungal», he says. And the patient may be at risk of cardiac distress and an increasing number of bleeding episodes. Among which the most dangerous is the cerebral one. In addition to the risk of pneumonia e SEPS.
The cause of the disease and the onset with chemo
Pagano explains that the cause from the illness is still partially unknown. But it is a pathology observed more frequently in subjects over the age of 70 years old. The comorbidity complicate the situation. Finally, leukemia can also arise as a result of another tumor: «Chemotherapies can damage the bone marrow stem cell. And therefore favor the onset of leukemia and secondary myelodysplasia. The higher rate of emopathy malignant is observed in patients who have had treatment for the breast cancer. Or for i lymphomas. That is, potentially curable pathologies for the underlying disease», concludes the professor in the interview with Graziella Melina.
The professor of hematology all’Frederick II University of Naples Fabrizio Bread instead he explains to the news agency Dire that in older people, attempts are made to contain the disease as much as possible, especially in cases with hyperproliferation, “resorting to the use of products cytoreductive. At the moment the most used ones are the agents hypomethylatingnew-concept biological drugs that work very well in some areas and in this case of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia much less well than in other myelodysplastic syndromes”.
The tablet
Il Corriere della Sera instead he writes that Berlusconi is taking the chemotherapy through a tablet. Which doesn’t involve, she says, nausea and hair loss. The back pains that afflicted the former Knight, on the other hand, are one of the consequences of the disease. And the risks of cascading inflammatory processes are also linked to leukemia. As the pneumonia, treated with antibiotics and which should have the first effects shortly. For now, the former prime minister remains in intensive care at pavilion Q, floor -1 of the St. Raphael. In a box isolated from the passage of other patients. Fabio Ciceri, head of hematology of the clinic, follows him together with the trusted doctor Alberto Zangrillo. “Although the situation requires the utmost caution, the former prime minister is reportedly reacting positively to the antibiotic therapy decided to treat the pneumonia that has arisen in recent days,” sources close to the president told the news agency yesterday. Ansa.
Myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML)
“In general – underlines Pane – blood cancers make up about 15 percent of human cancers, but some forms can be particularly rare”. There chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (LMMC), it reads on site dell’Italian Association against Leukemia, is the most frequent of the myelodysplastic-myeloproliferative syndromes, and is a disease characterized by the increase of a specific population of white blood cells: monocytes. «This pathology – explain the scientists – is heterogeneous and usually appears in old age and can present itself in a dysplastic form, in which anemia and neutropenia prevail, or in a proliferative form, with a high number of white blood cells. There is always an excess of monocytes in the blood and marrow, and a variable number of immature cells.”
Prognosis and diagnosis
The peculiarity of the form that struck Silvio Berlusconi is that the disease is characterized by an increase in a particular population of white blood cells: i monocytes. Treatment is required when cancer cells increase so much that they block the bone marrow’s production of normal red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells. The prognosis associated with blood malignancies is improving significantly in all age groups. immunotherapies, molecular targeted drugs and intercellular approaches are changing the clinical history of cancer treatment. While the success rate is still highly variable, these new prospects bode very well indeed.
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