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Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) with the t(4;11) translocation has a very poor prognosis following conventional chemotherapy. Many patients are offered an allogeneic BMT in first remission. We report on the impact of allogeneic BMT on three patients with t(4;11) ALL in first remission. Median age was 20 years. One patient received marrow from an HLA-identical sibling and the other two from unrelated donors. All three engrafted and none of the patients developed acute or chronic GVHD. Remission status was monitored using a sensitive nested RT-PCR to detect the ALL-1/AF-4 hybrid transcript. All three were PCR-negative at 3 months post-BMT. One of the unrelated recipients died of a fungal infection 4 months post-BMT. The other two are alive and in molecular remission at 21 and 24 months post-BMT. This is the first report of longitudinal follow-up of t(4;11) ALL post-allogeneic BMT by PCR. The early attainment of molecular remission in the absence of GVHD suggests that the conditioning regimen may have been more important than a graft-versus-leukaemia effect in these patients. Follow-up of larger numbers of patients will be required to confirm these preliminary observations.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/sj.bmt.1701636

Type

Journal article

Journal

Bone Marrow Transplant

Publication Date

04/1999

Volume

23

Pages

695 - 696

Keywords

Acute Disease, Adult, Bone Marrow Transplantation, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 11, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 4, Chronic Disease, Graft vs Host Disease, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Polymerase Chain Reaction, Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma, Remission Induction, Translocation, Genetic