Dr Lena Winestone: Disparities in Outcomes in Children With AML Based on Neighborhood Characteristics

Children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who come from neighborhoods with lower income have poorer outcomes and may have access to care issues, said Lena Winestone, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

Transcript

What have you found regarding how neighborhoods, specifically if they are those with low income and low education, impact survival in children with cancer?

So, we found that children with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of leukemia that affects children, have an increased risk of mortality if they come from a low-income or high-poverty neighborhood. In particular we looked at that and broke it down in several different ways. We looked at the risk of relapse and found that there was an increased risk of relapse among those patients. And in addition, we found that they had a higher risk of toxicity that led to mortality among that patient population.

Finally, we looked at early mortality as a marker, potentially, of access to care, and found that low-income patients also have a substantial increased risk of early mortality or death during the first course of chemotherapy, suggesting that a component of what’s going on may be related to access.