"Blue Bloods" actor and comedian Alex Duong recently died at 42 after a year-long battle with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive cancer.
Rhabdomyosarcoma is soft tissue cancer that develops in your skeletal muscles, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, one type of this cancer, is particularly aggressive, meaning it spreads quickly, the clinic notes.
Rhabdomyosarcoma is more common in children but can occur in adults, according to the American Cancer Society, and alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma typically affects all age groups equally.
Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma has "high local recurrence and metastasis tendency" in adults and "has the worst prognosis" of rhabdomyosarcoma diagnoses, according to a 2019 report in the International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research.
Symptoms depend on the tumor’s location.
