Leukemia is a common malignant tumor of the blood system, commonly known as “blood cancer”.
Chemical factors: chemotherapeutic drugs, such as some drugs for malignant tumors, such as etoposide, etc. In this case, leukemia is often a second tumor, and some breast cancer patients are cured of breast cancer after radiotherapy, and then develop acute leukemia years later. There are also chemical toxicity in the environment, such as pesticides and disinfectants, which have the risk of causing leukemia.
Physical factors: mainly various kinds of rays, radioactive substances, electromagnetic radiation in the space we live in nowadays are becoming more and more unavoidable factors, but the carcinogenic effect of general ones such as cell phone signals is still unclear.
Biological factors: Viral infections, for example, human T-cell leukemia virus is a relatively clear virus that can cause T-lymphocytic leukemia.
Genetic background: For example, it is relatively well accepted that smoking can cause lung cancer in large sample studies. However, for each individual, some people have smoked for decades without developing lung cancer, while others have not smoked a single cigarette but have developed lung cancer, which is a genetic background difference, also called genetic susceptibility. Identical twins, where one has leukemia, are significantly more likely to develop leukemia in the other, which is also a specific example.
These are generalized etiologies that act on susceptible patients, leading to chromosomal or genetic abnormalities in hematopoietic stem cells, activation of oncogenes and fire suppression of oncogenes, resulting in the development of leukemia. Therefore, leukemia is not an infectious or genetic disease, but an acquired disease.