What Is Acute Undifferentiated Leukemia (AUL)?
Acute undifferentiated leukemia is a very rare type of aggressive leukemia — a type of cancer. It’s a very serious condition because researchers don’t know much about it.
Leukemia is a type of cancer of the white blood cells, which are also called leukocytes. It can also affect other parts of your body that are related to your blood, such as bone marrow.
Types of leukemia are divided up based on the type of white blood cells that are cancerous (their morphology). This could be the myeloid type or the lymphoid type of white blood cells.
Leukemia types can also be divided up according to how aggressive they are. Chronic leukemia is less aggressive, while acute leukemia is more aggressive.
- chronic lymphocytic leukemia
- chronic myeloid leukemia
- acute lymphocytic leukemia
- acute myeloid leukemia
There are also many types of rare leukemias. Some of these fall into the category of acute leukemia of ambiguous lineage (ALAL). These are acute leukemias that don’t neatly fit into either the lymphocytic or the myeloid category.
Acute undifferentiated leukemia (AUL) is one type of ALAL. It’s very rare, so doctors don’t have a lot of information about the best ways to treat it. Therefore, AUL is quite serious.
Let’s go over the information we do have about AUL.