About:  Leiomyosarcoma (LMS)

What is Leiomyosarcoma? This cancer is so rare that that most people
have never heard of it before. So, here is some basic information.

The National LeioMyoSarcoma Foundation, Inc.

www.nlmsf.org

Leiomyosarcoma:  a rare cancer of the soft tissues of the body. Leiomyosarcoma (LMS) strikes four in every one million people. Too many patients to be considered an orphan cancer with government research dollars granted and too few to gather the attention from the drug manufacturers.

www.leiomyosarcoma.info

All cancers start from one particular cell that mutates. Its DNA is damaged by mutations and changes so that the cell no longer grows in an orderly fashion according to the rules for its type. The cancer is often named for the cell type that it grows from but sometimes it has other names.

Soft tissue sarcomas are cancers in which wildly growing (called malignant or cancerous) cells are from a soft tissue part of the body. The soft tissues of the body include fat, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, skin, and cartilage.

You have essentially two kinds of muscle in your body, voluntary and involuntary.

Striated [striped] muscle cells makes up the voluntary muscles; the biceps, triceps, abs, pecs...all the muscles that you can use as you wish by thinking about them. A cancer growing from this kind of cell is a rhabdomyosarcoma.

Leiomyosarcoma is a cancer of smooth muscle cells.

Smooth muscle cells make up the involuntary muscles, which are found in most parts of the body: in uterus, stomach and intestines, walls of all blood vessels, skin [the muscles that give you 'goose bumps']. This muscle is involuntary muscle, you cannot make these muscles move by thinking about them.

Related Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiomyosarcoma

www.webmd.com/cancer/leiomyosarcoma-general

www.answers.com/topic/leiomyosarcoma

www.beatsarcoma.org

www.lmsdr.org

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