In this video, James Wu, MD, a hematology/oncology fellow at the Medical College of Wisconsin, discusses a letter published in the journal Leukemia about leukemia outcomes for pediatric and adult patients using 2022 cancer data from the World Health Organization’s global cancer database.
In the letter, Dr. Wu and colleagues showed that 500,000 individuals are diagnosed worldwide in 2022, with leukemia among the top 10 causes of cancer death in 71 countries for adults and the leading cause in 96 countries for children. Dr. Wu also discussed some surprising findings, including how women’s status affects pediatric leukemia rates.
“Nearly half a married woman lack decision-making power over their sexual reproductive health rights, and one can imagine the cascading and downstream effects that can have on children’s health,” Dr. Wu said. “The gender inequality index was a surprising finding in the study for pediatric leukemia outcomes, because typically it hasn’t been linked. You wouldn’t think it would have an association with leukemia outcomes, but here it does. Previously this gender inequality index has been shown to lead to worse child mortality as well as malnutrition, but our study is the first that we know of to link this index to worse pediatric cancer outcomes.”
Reference
Wu JF, Feliciano EJG, Singh A, Tremblay D, Abid MB, Dee EC. National cancer system metrics and leukemia outcomes: an analysis of global data for pediatric and adult patients. Leukemia. 2025. doi:10.1038/s41375-025-02598-3
Phillip McLeod helped with the reporting of this story.
