Aggressive Cancer Warning Signs Revealed After JFK’s Granddaughter’s Diagnosis

Days after Tatiana Schlossberg announced that she has terminal cancer, attention is focused on the warning signs of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, 35, shared the details of her diagnosis in an essay published in The New Yorker on November 22.

Schlossberg, the daughter of Kennedy’s daughter Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, learned of her illness in May 2024.

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She wrote that a doctor predicted she would live about a year.

The first indicator of Schlossberg’s illness was an abnormally high white blood cell count, which doctors detected just hours after she gave birth to her second child.

What is acute myeloid leukemia?

AML is a type of leukemia that begins in the bone marrow, the soft inner tissue of certain bones where new blood cells are made, according to the American Cancer Society.

This type of cancer usually spreads quickly from the bone marrow to the bloodstream and can also reach other parts of the body, such as the lymph nodes, liver, spleen, brain and spinal cord, and testicles, according to SCA.

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In some cases, clumps of leukemic cells can form a solid mass known as myeloid sarcoma.

Schlossberg AML is due to a rare genetic mutation known as inversion 3, which is an abnormality of chromosome 3 in leukemic cells.

“Inversion 3 correlates with a very high rate of resistance to standard chemotherapy treatments and therefore very poor clinical outcomes,” Dr. Stephen Chung, a leukemia expert and oncologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, told News Digital. (Chung was not involved in Schlossberg’s care.)

Red flags and risk factors

The most common symptoms of Schlossberg’s type of cancer include the sudden onset of severe fatigue, difficulty breathing with exertion, unusual bleeding or bruising, fever and infections, according to Dr. Pamela Becker, a professor in the Division of Leukemia at City of Hope, an American cancer research and treatment organization in California, who also did not treat Schlossberg.

Sometimes AML can feel like a bad flu with a general feeling of being unwell.

Chung noted that AML usually causes abnormally low blood cell counts or, in some cases, an abnormally high white blood cell count.

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“This may be detected in routine testing for other purposes, or because the patient develops symptoms due to these low blood counts,” he said.

Acute myeloid leukemia can sometimes feel like a bad flu with a general feeling of malaise, said Robert Sikorski, M.D., Ph.D., a hematology/oncology expert and medical director of Cero Therapeutics in California.

“Some patients also experience bone pain or night sweats,” he told News Digital.

Known risk factors for AML include prior chemotherapy or radiation, smoking, prolonged exposure to benzene, and certain inherited syndromes, although most cases occur without any identifiable cause, according to Sikorski, who has not treated Schlossberg.

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In some rare cases, people can inherit mutations that make AML hereditary, and recent research suggests that these cases may be more common than previously thought, Chung noted.

“We used to check this only in younger patients with acute myeloid leukemia, but now we believe that all patients should be screened for these mutations,” he said.

Treatment for acute myeloid leukemia

According to Becker, the standard treatment for acute myeloid leukemia is intensive chemotherapy with a combination of two drugs, to which additional agents are added according to the specific characteristics of each patient.

“We now believe that all patients should be screened for these mutations.”

For patients with higher-risk types of acute myeloid leukemia, chemotherapy is usually followed by a stem cell (bone marrow) transplant to prevent relapse. Transplants come from compatible donors, often family members.

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“This is a much more complicated process that typically involves another month in the hospital, followed by close monitoring for many months, as well as a much higher risk of treatment-related side effects,” Chung said.

There is no specific treatment that is effective for Schlossberg’s specific chromosomal abnormality, doctors said, although some new cell therapies and immunotherapies are being investigated.

For older patients who are not strong enough to receive intensive chemotherapy, the standard treatment is venetoclax/azacitidine (a combination therapy used to treat certain types of AML), Chung said.

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“This can often be administered primarily outside the hospital on a monthly basis,” he said. “Although it is not technically considered curative, it can work very well; in some cases, patients remain in remission for many months, if not years.”

Hope ahead

According to Sikorski, there is hope on the horizon, as the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia has advanced more in the last decade than in the previous 30 years.

“New targeted drugs have been approved in several subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia, and early work on immune therapies, including CAR-T and other engineered cell therapies, is beginning to reach clinical trials for acute myeloid leukemia,” Sikorski told News Digital.

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“Supportive care has also improved significantly, helping patients tolerate treatment more effectively.”

While there is no drug designed specifically for inversion 3 yet, he reiterated, “many studies focused on high-risk AML are actively enrolling these patients, and the overall treatment landscape continues to expand.”