In the United States in 2018, an estimated 10,590 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed among children from birth to 14 years, and about 1,180 children are expected to die from the disease. Although cancer death rates for this age group have declined by 57 percent over the past four decades, cancer remains the leading cause of death from disease among children. The most common types of cancer diagnosed in children ages 0 to 14 years are
leukemias,
brain and other
central nervous system (CNS) tumors, and
lymphomas.
Although pediatric cancer is rare, it’s the leading cause of disease-related death among children who survive past infancy (in the Western world). Around 1 in 500 children will be diagnosed with cancer by age 15. Like most rare diseases, childhood cancer is difficult to study because so few patients are available. Even for the most common types — leukemia, brain/CNS tumors, and lymphomas — only a few hundred cases have been sequenced over the past decade. But we’re making progress.
Genome-wide DNA methylation is predictive of outcome in juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia