Acute myelogenous leukaemia in children

Abstract

Acute myelogenous leukaemia in childhood is considerably more resistant to chemotherapy than the acute lymphocytic leukaemias. Recently, more aggressive therapy has improved the outlook for children with this difficult form of leukaemia. Long-term disease-free survival of children achieving remission has been reported to be more than 40% in some studies. This paper reviews both the present concept of leukaemogenesis as well as some of the more recent therapeutic studies on childhood AML.

A population‐based study of 272 children with acute myeloid leukaemia treated on two consecutive protocols with different intensity: best outcome in girls, infants, and children with Down's syndrome

“…Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a much more complex and resistant disease than the lymphoblastic variant, although progress in recent years has resulted in a third of such patients being long-term survivors (Lie, 1989;Boulad & Kernan, 1993;Ravindranath & Schultz, 1994). In an article on U.S.A. Childhood Cancer Survival in 1973-87, AML was said to be the childhood tumour with the worst prognosis (Novakovic, 1994).…”

Chemotherapy of Acute Myelocytic Leukemia in Children

“…Acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) in both children and adults is a more complex and resistant disease than acute lymphocytic leukemia. Progress has been slower and therapy more complicated, but with intensive myelosuppressive induction and further postremission therapy one‐third of such patients may now achieve longterm survival and probably be cured 1–5 …”

Therapy of childhood acute myelogenous leukemias

“…This can be attributed to intensification of chemotherapy, increased use of bone marrow transplantation, and improved supportive care. Thus 30-50% of children with AML achieve long-term event-free survival with current treatment strategies [61,66,85,96]. This review gives an overview about the evolution of and rationale for current pediatric treatment protocols, with special emphasis on the German Berlin-Frankfurt-Münster (BFM) studies, and discusses new directions for the future.…”