Signs and symptoms of leukaemia

Leukaemia (sometimes spelt as leukemia) is a cancer of the blood cells. If you have leukaemia, your body makes some abnormal blood cells. These leukaemia cells behave differently from healthy blood cells.

Symptoms can depend on how quickly a leukaemia develops.

Slower growing leukaemias such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) may cause no symptoms in the early stages. They may be discovered by chance after a routine blood test. If you do have symptoms, these may be mild and develop gradually. The symptoms can be confused with the symptoms of more common illnesses, such as flu.

Faster growing leukaemias such as acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) or acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) are more likely to cause symptoms that appear over a few weeks. People often feel ill quite quickly. Most symptoms of acute leukaemia are caused by leukaemia cells filling the bone marrow. This means healthy blood cells do not move into the blood as normal.

If you have any of the following symptoms, you should always tell your doctor and have them checked. But remember, these symptoms can also be caused by many other illnesses.

We understand that showing any symptoms of what could be cancer is worrying. The most important thing is to speak to your GP as soon as possible. We're also here if you need someone to talk to. You can:

• Call the Macmillan Support Line on 0808 808 00 00.
• Chat to our specialists online.

Leukaemia can stop your body making white blood cells normally. If you have too few healthy white blood cells, you might:

• keep getting infections
• feel unwell and run down
• have a sore throat or mouth
• have a fever or high temperature.

Other leukaemia symptoms may include:

• having a fever and night sweats
• unexplained weight loss
• swollen lymph nodes 
• a tender lump in the upper left-hand side of the tummy (abdomen). This is caused by an enlarged spleen
• aching joints and bones
• visual disturbances and headaches.

We want everyone affected by cancer to feel our information is written for them.

We want our information to be as clear as possible. To do this, we try to:

• use plain English
• explain medical words
• use short sentences
• use illustrations to explain text
• structure the information clearly
• make sure important points are clear.

We use gender-inclusive language and talk to our readers as ‘you’ so that everyone feels included. Where clinically necessary we use the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ or ‘male’ and ‘female’. For example, we do so when talking about parts of the body or mentioning statistics or research about who is affected.

You can read more about how we produce our information here.