Laura Poy Solano
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, February 16, 2022, p. eleven
In Mexico, it is estimated that 50 percent of cancer deaths in children under 20 years of age are due to leukemia. And in the case of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which ranks as the leading cause of death in children aged 5 to 14 years, its causes are associated with socio-environmental factors in more than 90 percent of cases, warned Elena Álvarez-Buylla, general director of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt).
In the context of International Childhood Cancer Day, he highlighted that 50 percent of the deaths that have occurred in the past five years due to this disease are concentrated in 104 municipalities in the country. Those with the highest mortality rates are located in Veracruz, Chiapas, the state of Mexico and Puebla.
In interview with the daypointed out that as part of the efforts to address this priority health issue, the National Project for Research and Incidence (Pronaii) for Childhood Leukemia was created in 2019, which will have resources of about 140 million pesos until 2024.
He highlighted the installation, last November, of a high-tech laboratory, unique in Latin America, with the first high-level multiplexed mass cytometer in Mexico that allows an accurate diagnosis of the disease.
It is sought, he added, to certify it before the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks in order to turn it into a national reference center for the diagnosis of leukemia in Mexico. The idea is to identify laboratories that follow the diagnostic canons and that are linked to this national reference laboratory, and that this national network, this diagnostic system certified by Conacyt, carry out the accurate diagnosis
.
It is, he explained, a multidisciplinary project, coordinated by Dr. Rosana Pelayo Camacho, a researcher attached to the Puebla Biomedical Research Center of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), which includes developing a high-precision diagnosis as a central axis.
With the development of 11 projects, the participation of 50 high-level researchers, 20 national research institutions, 10 concentration hospitals and two clinical laboratories, it also seeks to develop a comprehensive childhood leukemia registry network that will be installed in IMSS clinics -Welfare; as well as promoting diagnostic harmonization and new therapeutic developments.
He added that a Digital Socio-environmental Laboratory was also created to generate risk profiles that complement the medical records that are raised at the first level of care, which will allow, with the support of the scientific team coordinated by Dr. Jacqueline Calderón, from the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, to know the causes and risk factors of childhood leukemia.
