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- Cancer Information
For medical questions, we encourage you to review our information with your doctor.
Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML)
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- Supportive Therapy for the Patient with Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- Chemotherapy for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- Growth Factors for Treating Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- Radiation Therapy for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- Surgery for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- Stem Cell Transplant for Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- General Approach to Treatment of Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- References: Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
- If You Have Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML)
Growth Factors for Treating Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia
Hematopoietic growth factors are hormone-like substances that stimulate bone marrow to produce blood cells. These substances occur naturally in the body, but scientists have found a way to make them in large amounts. This lets patients get larger doses of these growth factors than their body would make. Growth factor drugs are usually given by subcutaneous (under the skin) injections (shots).
Shortages of blood cells cause many of the symptoms in people with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML), and growth factors can help keep blood counts at more normal levels.
Erythropoietin (Epo® or Procrit®) is a growth factor that promotes red blood cell production. It can help some patients avoid getting a lot of red blood cell transfusions. Sometimes erythropoietin is given along with a growth factor for white blood cells (G-CSF, Neupogen®, or filgrastim) to improve the patient’s response to the erythropoietin. Darbepoetin (Aranesp®) is a long-acting form of erythropoietin. It works in the same way but can be given less often.
A drug called oprelvekin (Neumega®, interleukin-11, or IL-11) can be used to stimulate platelet production. This drug can help increase the platelet counts of some CMML patients for a time, but then the counts go down again. For most people with CMML, this drug is not very helpful.
The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and oncology certified nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.
Last Revised: October 25, 2017
American Cancer Society medical information is copyrighted material. For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.
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