- Posted December 11, 2025
Leukemia Strikes Black Patients Earlier, With Higher Risk Of Death, Study Says
Leukemia poses a considerably higher risk to Black patients compared to white patients, a new study says.
Black patients are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at a younger age and are more likely to die from the blood cancer, according to findings presented Saturday at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Orlando.
“Our findings confirm those of previous, smaller studies that Black patients with AML develop the disease at a significantly younger age, on average, than white patients and, even when treated in clinical trials, have significantly worse outcomes than white patients,” lead researcher Dr. Shella Saint Fleur-Lominy, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland, said in a news release.
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a rare, fast-growing cancer that starts in the bone marrow. The disease promotes the production of abnormal blood cells, which crowd out healthy cells and eventually lead to organ damage, researchers said in background notes.
For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 3,500 AML patients who took part in clinical trials between 1984 and 2019, including 184 Black patients and 156 patients of other races and ethnicities.
“To our knowledge, this study includes data for a larger number of Black patients than any other such study of AML survival across National Cancer Institute-supported clinical trials,” Saint Fleur-Lominy said.
Results showed that Black patients were diagnosed with AML around age 48 on average, compared with nearly 54 for white people.
Black patients also had a 31% higher risk of dying from AML and a 21% higher risk of premature death from any cause, researchers found.
The most common mutations seen in AML cells occurred at similar rates in Black and white patients, the study showed.
However, survival among Black patients was cut in half if they had mutations in the NPM1 gene — about 9 months compared with 19 months for white people, results showed.
“Although the NPM1 mutation is typically associated with more favorable outcomes of AML treatment, we did not see those more favorable outcomes in Black patients,” Saint Fleur-Lominy said.
Similar numbers of Black and white patients receive stem cell transplants to treat their leukemia, but only 37% of Black patients versus 49% of white people receive stem cells from a healthy, compatible donor, researchers found.
That type of transplant offers patients the best chance of a cure, Saint Fleur-Lominy said.
Researchers said future study should add other data sets from patients with AML to increase the total number of patients and provide a better assessment of the genetic risks associated with leukemia.
Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The Leukemia Research Foundation has more on acute myeloid leukemia.
SOURCE: American Society of Hematology, news release, Dec. 6, 2025
