A Ten Year Descriptive Study of Adult Leukaemia at Al-Jomhori Teaching Hospital in Sana'a, Yemen

Abstract

Background: There is scarcity of data of the epidemiology of leukaemia in Arab countries including Yemen. Understanding patterns of leukaemia underpins epidemiology and can provide insight into disease etiology. The aim of this research is to determine the epidemiologic pattern of adult leukaemia in Yemen.Methods: The research is a descriptive cross-sectional study. We analyzed the data of 702 adult patients with leukaemia, who were newly diagnosed over a ten-year period between October 1999 and October 2009 at the referral haematology centre in Sana’a at Al-Jomhori Teaching Hospital, according to type of leukaemia, age, sex, geographic distribution and time of diagnosis.Results: Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) was found to be the most common (45.1%) followed by Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML) (26.5%), Acute Lymphoid Leukaemia (ALL) (17.7%) and Chronic Lymphoid Leukaemia (CLL) (10.7%), respectively. There was an almost equal prevalence of AML and CML for males and females but males had significantly more cases of ALL and CLL (p =0.008). A significant variation in geographic pattern showed that the highest number of cases is seen the Central mountainous region and the least number of cases in the South-eastern region which is coastal and lowland (p<0.001). The seasonal variation showed that higher number of ALL cases was seen in the summer months (33%) compared with other seasons (21% in the spring, 24.2% in autumn and 21.8% in winter).Conclusions: The pattern of adult leukaemia in Yemen is different from that seen in western countries which could be attributed to different environmental exposure. The geographic pattern indicates a possible role of certain environmental factors which warrant further investigations. The pattern of seasonal variation needs further studies for evaluating the seasonality.