What causes blood cancer?

What causes blood cancer?

Researchers know blood cancer happens when blood cell DNA changes or mutates, but they aren’t sure why this happens. Your DNA tells cells what to do. In blood cancer, DNA tells blood cells when to grow, when to divide or multiply and/or when to die.

When DNA gives your cells new instructions, your body develops abnormal blood cells that grow and multiply faster than normal and sometimes live longer than normal. When that happens, normal blood cells become lost in an ever-growing horde of abnormal cells that crowd your normal cells and monopolize space in your bone marrow.

Eventually, your bone marrow produces fewer normal cells. That means there aren’t enough normal cells available to do their essential tasks: carrying oxygen through your body, fighting infection and controlling bleeding. Here’s how genetic change may cause the three blood cancer types:

• Leukemia: Researchers think leukemia happens when a combination of environmental and genetic factors triggers DNA changes. In this case, researchers think changes in chromosomes may trigger DNA changes. Chromosomes are strands of DNA. When cells divide and make two new cells, they copy these DNA strands. Sometimes, genes from one chromosome switch to another chromosome. In leukemia, this switch may affect a set of genes that help cells grow and another set of genes that suppress tumors. Researchers believe exposure to high levels of radiation or certain chemicals plays a role in the genetic changes that cause leukemia.
• Lymphoma: Lymphoma happens when there’s a change in genes in white blood cells, called lymphocytes, that causes them to multiply uncontrollably. In addition, abnormal lymphocytes don’t die when normal lymphocytes die. Again, researchers don’t know what triggers the genetic change, but research shows certain infections or having a depressed immune system may be factors.
• Myeloma: In this case, plasma cells in your bone marrow get new genetic instructions that make them multiply. Researchers are investigating potential links between myeloma and chromosomal change that affect genes that control plasma cell growth.