Haunting appearance of bcr/abl fusion gene products in a patient with therapy related leukaemia.
A 81-year-old man was diagnosed as multiple myeloma and had received melphalan for 6 years. After that, he developed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with monosomy 7 and minor bcr/abl transcripts. Fluorescence in situ hybridization identified no detectable level of bcr/abl rearrangement. During chemotherapy for AML, minor bcr/abl transcripts disappeared and instead major bcr/abl transcripts emerged. He died of pneumonia 3 months later. At that time, neither minor nor major bcr/abl transcripts were seen. These observations suggest that certain therapy related leukemia may be susceptible to generate very small clones with bcr/abl rearrangements.
The Second Department of Internal Medicine, Mie University School of Medicine, 2-174 Edobashi, Tsu, Mie 514-8507, Japan. k2nakase@clin.medic.mie-u.ac.jp
Kazunori
K
Nakase
Yuuichi
Y
Yamamoto
Koichi
K
Morita
Tetsuro
T
Yamaguchi
Kazuhiro
K
Nishii
Hiroshi
H
Shiku
D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002897:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 7 / Q000378:metabolism*; D017809:Fatal Outcome; D006801:Humans; D015470:Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute / Q000150:complications / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000378:metabolism*; D008297:Male; D009006:Monosomy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009101:Multiple Myeloma / Q000150:complications / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000378:metabolism*; D016609:Neoplasms, Second Primary / Q000150:complications / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000378:metabolism*; D011014:Pneumonia / Q000209:etiology / Q000378:metabolism