What are the risk factors for developing acute myeloid leukemia?

What are the risk factors for developing AML? The main risk factors would include exposure to radiation. And this comes from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also people who have had therapeutic radiation. Think about a man who has received radiation for prostate cancer. There is a lot of marrow in the pelvis and that radiation can do damage to that marrow and then lead to the development of leukemia many years later. Similarly, with certain chemotherapy drugs, there's a drug called cyclophosphamide that is used in curative regimens for breast cancer, for lymphoma. And it can also cause damage to these early blood cells and manifest in leukemia years later. Others would include etoposide, again another drug used to treat testicular cancer, highly curable, lymphoma. So certain exposures such as this, chemical exposures as well, generally industrial solvents, things like benzene and toluene. So these are the things that can lead to leukemia. There are certain inherited conditions that can also do this. It's rare. There's a syndrome called Lee-Fraumeni where there's damage to one of the tumor suppressor genes in our body that can lead to the development of leukemia. Also other genetic predispositions like Fanconi's anemia. But these are relatively rare. Generally speaking, AML is not an inherited disorder. In terms of potential causes for AML, we usually don't know in an individual patient what caused their AML. It's almost impossible to define. There are known issues of exposures in the population such as exposures to higher doses of radiation, exposures to other chemicals which have since been taken out of the workplace and most everywhere in this country. Things like that we knew in the past did increase one's risk of having leukemia. But in individual cases today, it's very uncommon that we can identify a certain inciting event unless they had prior therapy for some other cancer. Other chemotherapy, other radiation puts them at risk for a blood cancer. The average age is generally older. People are around 67, 68.