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4 slides generated from the cancer page, with a quiz from the open benchmark and speaker notes that cite the sources. Arrow keys move between slides; Print gives one slide per page.
Burkitt leukaemia is Burkitt lymphoma presenting mainly in the bone marrow and blood, so that it looks like acute lymphoblastic leukaemia but is a mature B-cell cancer driven by the MYC gene. It is treated as Burkitt lymphoma, with short, very intensive chemotherapy plus rituximab and protection of the brain, and most children and many adults are cured.
The WHO classification identifies Burkitt lymphoma/leukaemia as one highly aggressive mature B-cell neoplasm with endemic, sporadic and immunodeficiency-associated variants, all carrying MYC rearrangements, and the leukaemic presentation is defined by more than 25 percent marrow blasts (Alaggio 2022; Blum 2004). Brief-duration, high-intensity chemotherapy with aggressive central nervous system prophylaxis achieves complete remission in 75 to 90 percent of adults with overall survival of 50 to 70 percent, and the cells are extremely chemosensitive (Blum 2004). In children, a phase 2 window study of a single dose of rituximab in 136 patients with newly diagnosed mature B-cell lymphoma and Burkitt leukaemia established its activity before it was built into paediatric regimens (Meinhardt 2010).
How it differs from its parent: presentation by marrow failure and blood involvement rather than an abdominal or jaw mass, a higher tumour burden with tumour lysis risk at the start of treatment, and the need to distinguish it from precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (which lacks surface immunoglobulin and MYC rearrangement) because the treatments differ entirely.
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| All cases | Treated as high-risk Burkitt lymphoma: short intensive chemotherapy with rituximab, methotrexate-based CNS prophylaxis and tumour lysis prevention. | not mapped |