myelogenous
Meaning of myelogenous: Myelogenous describes anything arising from or resembling bone marrow and is often used interchangeably with myeloid when naming certain leukemias.
Definition of myelogenous
Myelogenous is an adjective describing something that arises from, is produced by, or resembles bone marrow, the soft tissue inside certain bones where blood cells are formed. It appears most often within the names of certain blood cancers, describing a disease that originates from the marrow cells that normally mature into granulocytes and related blood cell lines.
In practice, myelogenous is largely interchangeable with myeloid when the two terms appear in disease names. Acute myeloid leukemia and acute myelogenous leukemia refer to the same disease, and the same overlap applies to the chronic form of the disease, with different sources or specialists favoring one version of the name over the other.
Because the two terms describe identical conditions rather than related but distinct diseases, a reader encountering either version in a chart, pathology report, or reference source can treat them as synonymous.
Also known as
Used in a sentence
The pathology report described the leukemia as myelogenous in origin, consistent with the bone marrow biopsy findings.
Good to know
Myelogenous and myeloid are used interchangeably in disease names such as leukemia, so the choice of term does not indicate a different diagnosis or a different disease process.
Word origin
Where “myelogenous” comes from
Formed from Greek myelos, meaning marrow, and the suffix -genous, from genes, meaning produced by or originating in.