Risk factors for developing AML can include smoking, inherited, or genetic, traits, and exposure to cancer-causing agents in the environment. There is only a very small chance that a person who has one of the few known risk factors for AML will develop the disease.
Cigarettes contain dozens of cancer-causing chemicals and are most often linked to solid tumors such as lung, bladder, and head and neck cancers, but smoking is also believed to be a risk factor for leukemia. Researchers estimate that about 20 percent of AML cases are related to smoking.
People who are exposed to high doses of radiation (from the explosion of an atomic bomb, from working in an atomic weapons plant, or from a nuclear reactor accident) have a heightened risk of developing leukemia. People who have been exposed over long periods to high levels of solvents such as benzene -- in the workplace, for example -- are also at risk.
People who were treated in the past with chemotherapy or radiation treatments for cancer have an increased risk of developing leukemia, because chemotherapeutic agents and radiation target rapidly dividing cells such as those of the bone marrow. These agents can cause mutations, or changes in a cell's DNA, that later can lead to malignancies including leukemia. AML is linked to treatments for Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia, and other malignancies such as breast and ovarian cancer.
People who have a myelodysplastic syndrome, a preleukemia condition, or who have rare genetic syndromes such as Down syndrome, Fanconi anemia, ataxia-telangiectasia, and Bloom syndrome are at slightly higher risk for developing leukemia.
Many people with one or more of these risk factors never develop leukemia. Most of the people who do develop AML have no risk factors at all. Scientists do know that most cases of leukemia are associated with specific gene mutations, but, in most cases, it is not clear what causes those mutations.
