When talking about leukemia, people tend to recall the Japanese TV series “Blood Doubt”, which was a hit in China in the early 1980s. The beautiful and kind-hearted main character Yuko was accidentally irradiated by a radiation source and unfortunately developed leukemia, which she did not survive despite constant blood transfusions and chemotherapy. At the time, leukemia was considered an incurable disease. Today, with the increasing research on leukemia and the gradual introduction of chemotherapeutic drugs with different mechanisms of action, the cure rate of leukemia is getting higher and higher, and people’s fear of leukemia is fading as the story fades away. Understanding leukemia In 1845, Bennett and Virchow reported a malignant disease of the hematopoietic system, leukemia, in Edinburgh, England, and Berlin, Germany, respectively, six weeks apart, and since then, human research on leukemia has begun, and it has now been more than 160 years, although people have been pursuing the cause of leukemia Although people have been searching for the causes of leukemia, there is still no clear answer to how to develop leukemia, and the more recognized causes are viral infections (leukemia is not contagious), ionizing radiation (such as the increase in the prevalence of leukemia after the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan), chemical substances (such as benzene) and genetic factors (less common). In addition, with the material abundance of society and the improvement of people’s living standards, the problems of decoration pollution, air pollution and environmental pollution in cities are becoming more serious, and these factors may also be important causes of leukemia. The main manifestation of leukemia is the appearance of abnormal white blood cells in the peripheral blood, commonly known as leukemic cells, which proliferate out of control in the bone marrow and other hematopoietic tissues and are released into the peripheral blood, leading to a decrease in the production of normal red blood cells and platelets, thus causing the patient to gradually develop symptoms of anemia and bleeding. Although white blood cells play an immune defense role in the body and are the body’s “guards”, leukemia cells betray the body’s “guards” by losing their ability to kill germs, which leads to a decrease in immunity and a tendency to complicate infections with Fever, cough and other symptoms. The onset of acute leukemia is fierce but insidious. Patients may experience weakness, dizziness, low-grade fever, nosebleeds, etc. in their normal lives, and sometimes its manifestations are no different from those of a cold, so it is often overlooked. Almost all patients with leukemia have blood changes. Routine blood count and peripheral blood leukocyte classification can provide the doctor with a lot of information, such as whether they have leukemia or some other blood disorders, such as anemia, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, etc., but the final diagnosis depends on the bone marrow examination. The doctor selects a site on the patient’s iliac bone, anesthetizes it locally, punctures a bone puncture needle, and extracts a few milliliters of red bone marrow fluid for testing of leukemia cells. This procedure takes only a few minutes and the patient is free to move around after the procedure without any physical impact. After the bone marrow cell morphology, immunophenotyping, chromosome, fusion gene, and histochemical staining analysis, the type of leukemia the patient has can be determined, a chemotherapy regimen can be developed, and a preliminary judgment can be made about the prognosis of the disease. Leukemia is divided into two categories, acute and chronic, according to its course and the degree of differentiation of leukemia cells, and is classified according to different leukocyte series. Acute leukemia is divided into two categories: acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes) and acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia (M0, M1, M2, ……, M7). These two major categories of acute leukemia have different chemotherapy regimens and different disease prognosis and complications. For example, the M3 type of acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia, also known as acute promyelocytic leukemia, is currently the most effective type of leukemia, with a cure rate of more than 90%. “This is different from other types of acute leukemia. Arsenious acid, commonly known as arsenic, is an extremely toxic arsenic compound, but after dedicated research by our scholars, it has been used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia with good efficacy in the past 20 years. Since 1992, when we reported that arsenious acid could be used to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia, Japan and the United States have also applied it in clinical practice with remarkable efficacy, which has become the “Chinese wind” in the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia and a major contribution to the treatment of leukemia by hematologists in China!