Editorial Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a sig-nificantly different disease when compared to childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In adults it is basically a dis-ease of early adulthood with a higher incidence in males. Etiology as with most other cancers is unknown. However, certain factors are important that include hereditary disor-ders, high socioeconomic status and radiation exposure.1 Like childhood ALL, adult ALL also comprises of B and T phenotype2, however with the introduction of more inten-sive therapeutic protocols, there is no difference in these two subtypes as far as the long term prognosis is concerned which was previously poor for T ALL. The main biological difference is presence of Philadelphia chromosome seen only in 3-5 % of childhood ALL when compared to adult ALL present in up to 25 % of patients. It is probably th