Acute Myeloid Leukemia - Epidemiology Forecast to 2022

Thursday 27 June 2013, Amsterdam

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a rare cancer that accounts for a disproportionally high number of cancer-related deaths (O’Donnell et al., 2012; RKI, 2012). The disease is more common in the elderly and is slightly more common in men than in women (ACS, 2013; O’Donnell et al., 2012). AML progresses quickly and has low survival and high rates of relapse even with treatment (ACS, 2013; ASCO, 2012; O’Donnell et al.., 2012). The age of the patient, specifically over or under 60 years of age, and the classification of the disease are important factors that determine the treatment plan (NCI, 2013; Shah et al., 2013).

The report includes a 10-year forecast of the following segmentations in adults aged 20 and older across the 6MM:

• Incident cases of AML segmented by sex and 10-year age groups
• Five-year prevalent cases of AML segmented by the age groups 20–59 years and ≥ 60 years
• Incident and five-year prevalent cases of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) and myelodysplastic syndromes/therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (MDS/therapy-related AML) segmented by the age groups 20–59 years and ≥ 60 years
• Incident cases of AML that have mutations in the FLT3 gene
• Incident cases of AML classified in favorable, intermediate, and adverse risk groups

Epidemiologists forecast that the 6MM had 23,497 incident cases of AML in 2012, and close to half of the incident cases occurred in the US. The 6MM will experience an increase in disease burden driven by population increase in the next 10 years at the rate of 1.80% per year, resulting in 27,717 incident cases in 2022. The growth of incident cases in the US is the highest amongst all markets at 2.29% per year, whereas the 5EU (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) has a slightly slower growth rate of 1.33% per year from 2012–2022.

Prevalent cases of AML are nearly identical in numbers to incident cases, thereby underlining the lethality and poor long-term survival of the disease. Development of more effective therapies, particularly for elderly patients, would improve survival and increase disease prevalence.