Before getting into action mechanisms, symptoms, risk factors, etc. which are specific to each sub-variant of leukemia, it is crucial to establish the fundamental criteria for characterization. As mentioned, the two main forms of leukemia are myeloid and lymphocytic. Their names reference the type of cell affected; myeloid cells and lyphocytes respectively. Understanding the "Stem Cell" lecture proves useful here in explaining the difference between the two diseases. Pluripotent blood stem cells specialize into either myeloid or lymphoid stem cells, which in turn further specialize into unipotent leukocytes (aka white blood cells). This means that while both myeloid leukemia and lymphocytic leukemia affect white blood cells, they target different stem cell derivatives.
Both myeloid and lymphocytic have two common derivatives labeled "acute" and "chronic."
