Clinical features of oncohematological diseases in twins (literature review)

Abstract

Relevance. According to the World Health Organization, the most common oncological diseases in childhood are hemoblastoses. In particular, acute leukemia ranks the first in the structure of malignant tumors, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas – the third, Hodgkin lymphoma – the fifth in children aged 0 to 19 years. There is no convincing evidence of the inheritance of these diseases, but nevertheless, the literature describes cases of the development of the same disease with the same immunophenotype within the same family in mono- or dizygotic twins, which is one of the proofs of the persistence of preleukemic cells and the possibility of their migration from one twin to another during the antenatal development. These data allow us to study the features of oncogenesis in leukemia in twins, in particular monozygotic twins: the timing of tumor development, clinical features and molecular biological characteristics, as well as the response to therapy.Aim. To study the clinical and molecular-genetic features of hemoblastoses in twins.Materials and methods. When writing a literature review, we analyzed data in specialized medical databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science with the very first descriptions of the manifestations of tumors of the hematopoietic system in monozygotic twins from 1964 to 2023.Results. In the course of writing this literature review, we confirmed that the genetic component plays a significant role in the development of hemoblastoses. Studies on twins reveal genetic mutations that predispose to the development of malignant blood tumors, which in turn opens up new opportunities for the early diagnosis of hemoblastoses. The twin method allows for comparative clinical trials of different treatment approaches, which help to choose the optimal therapy and improve the prognosis of diseases.