Прогресс в лечении лейкозов спас 26 млн лет жизни, но расовое неравенство сохраняется

Innovations in the management of blood cancers have resulted in almost 26 million life-years saved (LYS) since 1950, according to research published in Blood Advances. However, disparities persisted across the study period, with Black patients having worse survival than White patients across all blood cancer types aside from multiple myeloma (MM) and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), researchers reported.  For this retrospective analysis, the researchers used data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results (SEER) Program for the years 1975 through 2025. They obtained incidence and cause-specific mortality rates and combined those with US Census data to estimate life-years lost (LYL) across the following age groups: Aged younger than 15 years  Aged 15 to 39 years Aged 40 to 64 years  Aged 65 to 74 years, and  Aged 75 years and older The researchers focused on acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), CML, and MM. A baseline year for each cancer type was defined based on “inflection points” in mortality rates that coincided with major advances in treatment associated with falling mortality rates, such as the introduction of rituximab in 1997 for NHL. Other baseline years were 1969 for ALL, 2001 for AML, 1993 for CLL, 1998 for CML, 1964 for HL, and 1994 for MM. Because the first chemotherapies for blood cancer emerged in the late 1940s, the researchers also used historical literature to extrapolate incidence and mortality rates for all blood cancers back to 1950, with a particular emphasis on ALL and HL, as their baseline years preceded the earliest available SEER data. These analyses allowed the researchers to estimate the LYS by extrapolating forward the mortality:incidence ratio at the baseline year to determine outcomes if the relevant cancer-specific innovations had never been introduced. The findings indicated that, across cancer types, there were 710,900 LYL due to blood cancers in 2025, with NHL accounting for the most LYL, at 260,000, followed by AML (171,000 LYL) and MM (155,100 LYL). The researchers explained that the high LYL associated with NHL was due to its high incidence, “despite the late age of disease onset,” whereas HL had the lowest LYL, at 17,100, “due to low incidence, late year of disease onset for some patients, and longstanding availability of curative therapy.” Innovations in disease management associated with each cancer type resulted in a total of 1,136,900 LYS in 2025, again with the highest number seen for NHL (324,600), followed by MM (210,600 LYS) and ALL (190,400 LYS). The lowest LYS recorded was for CML, at 64,300, as the breakthroughs in mortality rates occurred only with the recent introduction of multiple generations of tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The researchers estimated that, if the innovations had not occurred, the total LYL in 2025 across the blood cancers included in the study would have been 1,847,800. In this “alternative history,” LYL in 2025 would have included 584,600 due to NHL, 365,700 due to MM, 247,500 due to AML, and 234,500 due to ALL. The cumulative LYS from 1950 through 2025 was estimated to be 25,796,000 across the 7 blood cancer types, and included 8,220,000 for HL, 6,510,000 for ALL, and 5,337,000 for NHL. When the researchers stratified the results by race, they found, among patients aged 50 to 64 years, improvements in survival for White but not Black patients with ALL; inferior survival for Black patients compared to White patients with AML, CLL, and NHL or HL, despite improvements overall; and comparable improvements in survival in Black and White patients with MM and CML. In those younger than 50 years, “with the exception of MM patients, Black patients are still experiencing significantly shorter overall survival compared to White patients despite survival improvement for both groups,” the researchers reported.  “If the pace of innovation is significantly accelerated, with special focus on unmet needs in hematological malignancies, we have the opportunity to further increase the LYS,” the researchers concluded. “This goal can be achieved if the development of promising therapies, foundational and translational research, and equitable access to those therapies are enhanced.” Disclosures: This research was supported by Blood Cancer United. The study authors reported having no conflicts of interest. Please see the original reference for complete disclosures. References: Chang DC, Eisfeld AK, Greenberger LM, Kolb EA. Life-years saved by advances in blood cancer therapy: A retrospective analysis. Blood Adv. Published online September 1, 2026. doi:10.1182/bloodadvances.2026019813