Scientists and doctors, with the help of modern technology and state of
the art technical equipment, have succeeded in finding somewhat of a
cure for leukemia. Pharmaceutical companies have come up with Gleevec,
a promising new oral treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia suffering
patients.
This type of cancer is one of the rarest and most life-threatening
forms known to affect humans. After three month of testing the Food and
Drug Administration have announced the approval of this new medicine,
in order to better fight leukemia.
People all over the world are now able to receive this life saving
treatment that is a culmination of many years of work, and thousand of
hours of lab testing. Great investments have been made in order for
people with leukemia to now be able to live a better life. This whole
collaboration between medicine and different institutions is a
testament to the marvelous and groundbreaking scientific research done
by people in labs across over the world. Everyone is lending a hand and
trying to fight this horrible disease that has greatly affected man
kind.
The new program instituted be the Food and Drug Administration allows
the accelerated approval of drugs in order to faster and better fight
life-threatening illnesses. Clinical trials done prior to the approval
of the drug have established that the drug has a serious effect on the
disease, significantly reducing the level of cancerous cells in the
bone marrow and the blood of treated patients.
Although long term effects of the drug have not yet been properly
studied, results show that Gleevec has a significant improvement on the
patient that is suffering from leukemia. Clinical benefit are still to
be completely proven, and that is why further tests and studies are
needed. The effect on the early stages of the disease will most
certainly have to be studied in order to see a real chance of survival
in patients. Side effects have still to be discovered and properly
evaluated. On-going studies are trying to find as we speak if side
effects do exist and if they do are they serious enough to pose a
threat to persons suffering from leukemia.
The new Gleevec actually works as an inhibitor of the translocation-
created enzyme. This way the drug is actually able to block the rapid
growth of the large amount of white blood cells present in the blood of
the human.
