On the occasion of the celebration of the Month ofl Blood Cancerwhich is commemorated in Septemberthe Cancer Registry Network (REDACT) and the Spanish Society of Hematology and Hemotherapy (IT’S OKAY) have presented this Tuesday the estimates of incidence by 2025 and the survival analysis. The report predicts that next year there will be 1,000 new cases diagnosed 25,770 new cases of liquid tumors, 14,258 in men and 11,397 in women. The annual incidence of cancer is around 285,000 diagnoses, so blood tumors are the most common. most frequent fifthsbehind those of breast, lung, prostate and colon.
At the presentation of the study, Rafael Marcos-Gragera, from the Epidemiology and Cancer Registry Unit of Girona (ICO-Girona) and coordinator of the HematoREDECAN research group, explained that “blood cancers are a group of diseases with well-established clinical characteristics but very heterogeneous profileswhich are divided into three large groups: lymphoid neoplasms, myeloid neoplasms and histiocytosis.”
Lymphoid neoplasms, which are cancers derived from the lymphocytesa type of red blood cell, are the most frequent, reaching 71% of the tumors estimated for 2025. On the other hand, myeloid neoplasms, which are a group of diseases in which immature blood cells, which are produced in the bone marrow and which under normal conditions would mature into red blood cells, white blood cells or platelets, are not capable of differentiation and do not develop into healthy blood cells, will represent 28% of new diagnoses. These include myeloid leukemia and other diseases.
In the first type, the incidence remains stable in recent years, being more frequent in men than in women and increasing with age. In the case of myeloid neoplasms, a slight decline in prevalence, being also higher in men and increasing with age. The third type, histiocytosis, will only represent 1% of diagnoses in 2025, with an estimated 264 new cases.
The advances
The study also includes data from survivalwhich has increased in recent times given that blood diseases are the vanguard of personalized medicine, because, traditionally, it is easier for doctors and researchers to access and analyze blood cells than other types of tissues. In recent years, the great novelty has come from molecular biology and, particularly, from sequencing massive DNA, which has allowed us to know many more alterations and markers in blood diseasesboth in malignant and leukemiaas in the non-malignant and more frequent ones, such as thrombosis o to anemia.
With this and through personalized medicines, it has been possible to improve the quality of life of patients and that patients with some types of leukemia who lived, on average, only four years, now have the same life expectancy than healthy people of their age. Added to this are the revolutionary CAR-T therapies, which consist of extracting the patient’s T lymphocytes and providing them, by means of genetic modificationwith anti-tumor capacity. They are already being used in various hematological cancers, such as leukemias and lymphomas, and following their success, they are being investigated in other diseases and solid cancers.
Survival
Overall, the report presented this Tuesday reflects a overall survival of liquid tumors between 2009 and 2018 of 62%. Lymphoid neoplasms show a better prognosis, with a five-year survival rate from diagnosis of almost 68%, compared with 49.5% observed in myeloid neoplasms. Women have higher survival rates, at 66%, compared with 59% recorded in men. But there is a lot of heterogeneity. Some tumors have survival rates of 86% – follicular lymphoma – and others of 25% – acute myeloid leukemia.
The report also includes data on the child population, between 0 and 14 years of age. Next year, 445 new cases of liquid tumors are expected to be diagnosed in children, of which 64% will be leukemia (287 new cases) and 36% lymphoma (158 cases). There is also no increase in incidence in this population group and overall survival is higher than in adults, at an average of 84.5% five years after diagnosis.
