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Summary In a single centre, 52 newly diagnosed patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) under the age of 56 years received induction chemotherapy commencing with high-dose cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C) and etoposide (Protocol BFI 1), followed by Ara-C, 6 thioguanine (6TG). A total of 67% of patients entered remission using these drugs. An anthracycline was added for those patients not in remission. The overall remission rate (CR) was 86.5% (45/52), with a minimum follow-up of 90 days. Patients are hospitalised for relatively short periods, and consequently require less blood product and antibiotic support. Patients in continuing first remission following, induction with Ara-C and etoposide are similar in number to those in continuing first remission who initially received an anthracycline. This would imply that the efficiency of Ara-C and etoposide in inducing long-term disease-free survival is comparable with anthracycline-containing regimens. We conclude that high-dose Ara-C and etoposide used in the first induction cycle for treating AML have good antileukaemic effect with acceptable toxicity.Patients with AML with first remission can now expect a cure rate of 45-60% following either ABMT or BMT (Hurd, 1987). These results, however, depend upon obtaining remission, higher CR rates rendering more