Leukaemia is a cancer of the white blood cells.
Normally white cells, which are made in our bone marrow, fight infection in the body. To be able to do this, they need to be 'grown-up' or mature. In leukaemia, the bone marrow produces loads of white cells that aren’t mature enough to do their job. The numbers of these immature cells keeps increasing and fills the bone marrow, until eventually they go into the blood and are carried around the body. This interferes with how the bone marrow makes other types of blood cells. It is almost as if there isn’t enough room for the other types of cells which is why you may not have many red cells, platelets and normal white cells.
There are a few different types of leukaemia, but acute lymphoblastic leukaemia - or ALL for short - is one of two that tend to affect younger people. The other type is acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). ALL gets its name from the blood cells where the cancer begins, in early lymphoid cells called lymphoblasts.
It tends to affect young people under the age of 15 more than adults.
The information in this section covers ALL, but if you have a different type and want to know more, please contact us.
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