title: Prognostic significance of in vitro marrow culture growth pattern in untreated acute nonlymphocytic leukemia.
abstract: The growth pattern of marrow cells in agar culture was studied in 90 adult patients with acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANLL) at diagnosis. We classified the abnormal growth patterns into 4 groups, A: no growth, B: decreased growth, C: excessive microcluster formation and D: excessive cluster growth with more than 20 colonies. There was a good correlation between growth pattern and FAB subtype. A predominance of group A growth was observed in M1, while group B growth was found in 50% of patients with M2 and M5. No relationships between the growth patterns and other clinical parameters were detected. Sixty-six patients were evaluable for treatment outcome. The growth pattern significantly correlated with complete remission rate. The remission rates were 52, 87, 80, and 25% for patients with group A, B, C and D growth, respectively. Analyses of remission duration and survival curves showed significant differences among the different growth patterns. Patients with D growth experienced a shorter remission duration and a lower survival rate than other groups. These results indicate that the in vitro culture growth pattern in untreated ANLL is of prognostic significance in predicting the response to therapy.
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001853:Bone Marrow / Q000473:pathology*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007938:Leukemia / Q000145:classification / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D014410:Tumor Stem Cell Assay