Test boosts survival rates for children with blood cancer

An Australian research has led to a breakthrough in doubling the survival rate for children with an aggressive form of blood cancer.
Experts at Children's Cancer Institute Australia in Sydney initiated a trial which is said to have boosted the survival rate for children suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) to 75 per cent, Australian news agency AAP said today.
"The research would save dozens of young lives in Australia alone," said Glenn Marshall, director of the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children's Hospital Randwick.
"In Australia, each year over 600 kids are diagnosed with cancer or leukaemia and around 150 of those kids won't make it, sadly," he said.

During the decade-long clinical trial, the scientists developed a way to test for the slightest trace of diseased cells in the bone marrow of children with ALL - including among patients who appeared to be responding well to treatment - to identify possible relapses months or years in advance.
Children at a high risk of relapsing were then treated with an intensive chemotherapy protocol.

Marshall said 1000 children had been involved in the research in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
"Approximately 30 to 40 children in those countries would not be alive today if we didn't have our trial, because the cure rate for those high-risk patients compared to the 90s has doubled," he said.

Just ten years ago, as many as one-third of children with high-risk ALL had the chances of recovery from the illness, the report said, adding that the research detailed in the journal Leukaemia has helped in increasing the survival rate.
"Using this test we could tease out the small population of children at the highest risk of relapse and in fact predict their chance of relapse a long way before it occurred clinically," Marshall said.