Corticosteroid sensitivity was defined as a peripheral blood blast cell count <1.5 × 10/l after the 7-day corticosteroid prephase.
The AML patients with CNS involvement were younger, exhibited higher WBC, platelet, and peripheral blood blast cell counts, and had FAB M4 morphology, and 11q23 abnormalities more frequently than did the AML patients without CNS involvement.
In 70% of AML patients, there was a 50% reduction of peripheral blood blast cells, and in 25% of patients a 50% reduction in bone marrow blast cells.
Abbreviation: CNS central nervous system, WBC white blood cell, PBC peripheral blast cell, LDH lactate dehydrogenase, FAB French-American-British. Cytogenetic data were available for 378 patients at diagnosis.
Many cutpoints have been proposed to categorize continuous variables in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (white blood cell count, peripheral blast cell count, haemoglobin level, platelet count and age), and have been used to define therapeutic subgroups.
We could not show any correlation between SFRP-2 methylation and platelet count, peripheral blast cell count, red blood cell count, white blood cell count (WBC), or lactate dehydrogenase in PB.
Previous studies have shown that age < 2 years, high white blood cell (WBC) and peripheral blast cell (PBC) counts at diagnosis, French-American-British (FAB) M4 and M5 morphology, inversion of chromosome 16, and a hyperdiploid cytogenetic profile are risk factors for CNS involvement in paediatric AML patients at diagnosis [ 6- 8].
Eleven of the 12 patients with circulating leukaemic cells had blood blast clearance, two achieved complete remission and one with blast crisis of CMML returned in chronic phase.
FLT3-ITD length was not significantly correlated with age, white blood cell count, peripheral blood blast percentage, BM blast percentage or ITD mutant allele burden.
CR/CRi was seen only in patients who had white blood cell counts <10,000/μL and peripheral blood blast counts <1,000/μL.
The differences in blast cell counts in MDS seemed to be related not only to bone marrow dilution with peripheral blood, but also to the tendency of blast cells to aggregate into clusters in bone marrow particles.
