• Hong-Hu Zhu, Jiong Hu, Francesco Lo-Coco, and Jie Jin.
• Department of Hematology, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, and.
• Blood. 2019 Aug 15; 134 (7): 597-605.

AbstractArsenic trioxide and all-trans retinoic acid have become the frontline treatments for patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Despite the long wait for an oral arsenic drug, a commercially available agent, realgar-indigo naturalis formula (RIF), was not launched in China until 2009. Since then, over 5000 APL patients have been treated with oral RIF in China. Oral arsenic not only shows a clinical efficacy comparable to that of IV formulations but also displays a better safety profile, improved quality of life, and lower medical costs for patients. The promising results promote incorporating an outpatient postremission therapy model into clinical practice for both low-risk and high-risk APL patients in China. In this review, we discuss the evolution of oral arsenic RIF in the treatment of APL, with a special focus on how to address the related complications during induction therapy.© 2019 by The American Society of Hematology.

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