Health Topic

Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) or Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells. Learn more about symptoms and treatment.

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Also called: ALL · Acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Important: This page is general information, not medical advice. It does not recommend or prescribe any treatment. Always consult your doctor or pharmacist before starting, stopping or changing any medicine.

About Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

Leukemia is a term for cancers of the blood cells. Leukemia starts in blood-forming tissues such as the bone marrow. Your bone marrow makes the cells which will develop into white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. Each type of cell has a different job:

  • White blood cells help your body fight infection
  • Red blood cells deliver oxygen from your lungs to your tissues and organs
  • Platelets help form clots to stop bleeding

When you have leukemia, your bone marrow makes large numbers of abnormal cells. This problem most often happens with white blood cells. These abnormal cells build up in your bone marrow and blood. They crowd out the healthy blood cells and make it hard for your cells and blood to do their work.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is a type of acute leukemia. It's also called ALL and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. "Acute" means that it usually gets worse quickly if it's not treated. ALL is the most common type of cancer in children. It can also affect adults.

In ALL, the bone marrow makes too many lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. These cells normally help your body fight infection. But in ALL, they are abnormal and cannot fight infection very well. They also crowd out the healthy cells, which can lead to infection, anemia, and easy bleeding. These abnormal cells can also spread to other parts of the body, including the brain and spinal cord.

ALL happens when there are changes in the genetic material (DNA) in bone marrow cells. The cause of these genetic changes is unknown. However, there are certain factors that raise your risk of ALL.

The factors that raise your risk of ALL include:

  • Being male
  • Being white
  • Being over age 70
  • Having had chemotherapy or radiation therapy
  • Having been exposed to high levels of radiation
  • Having certain genetic disorders, such as Down syndrome

The signs and symptoms of ALL include:

  • Weakness or feeling tired
  • Fever or night sweats
  • Easy bruising or bleeding
  • Petechiae, which are tiny red dots under the skin. They are caused by bleeding.
  • Shortness of breath
  • Weight loss or loss of appetite
  • Pain in the bones or stomach
  • Pain or feeling of fullness below the ribs
  • Swollen lymph nodes - you may notice them as painless lumps in the neck, underarm, stomach, or groin
  • Having had many infections

Your health care provider may use many tools to diagnose ALL and figure out which subtype you have:

  • A physical exam
  • A medical history
  • Blood tests, such as Complete blood count (CBC) with differential
  • Blood chemistry tests such as a basic metabolic panel (BMP), comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP), kidney function tests, liver function tests, and electrolyte panel
  • Blood smear

If you are diagnosed with ALL, you may have additional tests to see whether the cancer has spread. These include imaging tests and a lumbar puncture, which is a procedure to collect and test cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

Treatments for ALL include:

  • Chemotherapy
  • Radiation therapy
  • Chemotherapy with stem cell transplant
  • Targeted therapy, which uses drugs or other substances that attack specific cancer cells with less harm to normal cells

Treatment is usually done in two phases:

  • The goal of the first phase is to kill the leukemia cells in the blood and bone marrow. This treatment puts the leukemia into remission. Remission means that the signs and symptoms of cancer are reduced or have disappeared.
  • The second phase is known as post-remission therapy. Its goal is to prevent a relapse (return) of the cancer. It involves killing any remaining leukemia cells that may not be active but could begin to regrow.

Treatment during both phases also usually includes central nervous system (CNS) prophylaxis therapy. This therapy helps prevent the spread of leukemia cells to the brain and spinal cord. It may be high dose chemotherapy or chemotherapy injected into the spinal cord. It also sometimes includes radiation therapy.

It sits within Cancers, Blood, Heart and Circulation and Immune System.

The lead U.S. institute for this subject is the National Cancer Institute.

When to speak to someone. Reading about a topic cannot tell you whether it applies to you. Speak to a doctor or pharmacist if symptoms are severe, sudden, getting worse, or simply not going away — and seek emergency care immediately for chest pain, breathing difficulty, sudden weakness or confusion, or a serious allergic reaction.

Research on Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

3,279 studies areregistered for this condition on ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's public registry. A selection is below — the links go straight to the registry entry, not to a summary of ours.

What a registered study does and does not mean. Registration means a study exists and has been declared publicly. It says nothing about whether the treatment being tested works, is safe, or is available to you. Many studies find no benefit — that is what research is for. Never seek out an experimental treatment on the strength of a registry entry alone.

Research currently under way

Research already completed

Study data from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 2026-07-30. Registry entries are supplied by study sponsors and investigators; ClinicalTrials.gov does not verify their scientific validity. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH.

Where to read more

Rather than paraphrase, we point you to the primary sources. Every link below is to a government health agency, a national institute or a recognised medical body — grouped by what you are trying to find out.

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Diagnosis and Tests

Treatments and Therapies

Prevention and Risk Factors

Related Issues

Statistics and Research

Clinical Trials

Medical subject headings

Clinicians and researchers index this subject under Leukemia, Lymphoid. These are the terms to use when searching medical literature.

This page is built from the MedlinePlus health topic record for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health. Information is from MedlinePlus.gov. PocketsInfo is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the NLM or the NIH. Retrieved 30 July 2026.