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Essential Thrombocythemia (ET): foods, diet, nutrition?
Blood Cancers & Disorders | Last Active: Sep 15 8:03am | Replies (112)Comment receiving replies
I'm extremely grateful that they have a better diagnostic system now, and even more grateful that in the last 6 years several medications have come out just for Myelofibrosis. I do wish i would have come up to the Mayo, Rochester, many years earlier. tho. (one regret). But my disease (with symptoms) seem to be caught right-on time. I'm 51. In all the research i have been reading, this disease sneaks up on many. I do wonder if it was slowly happening in the background without me knowing.
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There's some research that indicates that the driver mutation can be detected years or even decades before ET is activated. Could some people have the mutation and never develop an MPN?
The thinking seems to be that ET is not inherited like eye color, but that a predisposition to mutate may be inherited if you are exposed to certain carcinogenic factors that have not been identified. Given that Dad also had ET, I passed that info to my son and brother and told them to keep an eye on routine CBCs.
Fwiw, there is a move to get MPNs recognized by the VA. A lot of Vietnam vets exposed to napalm and Agent Orange developed MPNs. I know one right now a little older than me with MDS. Sadly, a lot of service members will have died be for the VA adds MPNs to the presumptive list. There is an MPN group working on this, MPN Advocacy and Education International, I believe.