British journal of haematology
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Low serum erythropoietin (EPO) is a minor criterion of Polycythaemia Vera (PV) but its diagnostic usefulness relies on studies performed before the discovery of JAK2 V617F mutation. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of serum EPO and JAK2 V617F allele burden as markers of PV as well as the combination of different diagnostic criteria in 287 patients (99 with PV, 137 with Essential Thrombocythaemia and 51 with non-clonal erythrocytosis). Low EPO showed good diagnostic accuracy as a marker for PV, with the area under the curve (AUC) of the chemiluminescent-enhanced enzyme immunoassay (CEIA) being better than that of radioimmunoassay (RIA) (0·87 and 0·76 for CEIA and RIA, respectively). ⋯ Adding low EPO or the JAK2 V617F allele burden did not improve the diagnostic accuracy for PV whereas the inclusion of both improved the sensitivity up to 83% and maintaining 96% specificity. Haematocrit and qualitative JAK2 V617F mutation allow a reliable diagnosis of PV. Incorporation of EPO and/or JAK2 V617F mutant load does not improve the diagnostic accuracy.
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Rituximab with chemotherapy in children and adolescents with central nervous system and/or bone marrow-positive Burkitt lymphoma/leukaemia: a Children's Oncology Group Report.
Children and adolescents with Burkitt Lymphoma (BL) and combined central nervous system (CNS) and bone marrow involvement still have a poor prognosis with chemotherapy alone. We therefore investigated in children and adolescents with bone marrow (≥25% blasts) and/or CNS-positive Burkitt lymphoma the chemoimmunotherapy combination of rituximab (375 mg/m(2) ) and the standard chemotherapy arm of our previously reported French-American-British (FAB) Lymphome Malins de Burkitt (LMB) 96 trial. Central pathological and cytogenetic characterization was also performed. ⋯ The incidence of grade III/IV mucositis during induction cycles with combined chemotherapy and rituximab was 31% and 26%, respectively. The 3-year event-free survival (EFS)/overall survival (OS) was 90% (95% confidence interval [CI], 76-96%) in the entire cohort and 93% (95% CI, 61-99%) in patients with CNS disease. Based on the results of this trial, an international randomized study of FAB/LMB 96 chemotherapy ± rituximab for high-risk patients is currently under investigation.