Haematologica
-
The National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference proposed the term "overlap" graft-versus-host disease to describe the situation when both acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease are present. ⋯ These findings suggest that the presence of acute features in patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease is a marker of adverse prognosis, greater functional impairment, and higher symptom burden.
-
Multicenter Study
A multicenter phase II trial of decitabine as first-line treatment for older patients with acute myeloid leukemia judged unfit for induction chemotherapy.
The treatment of acute myeloid leukemia of older, medically non-fit patients still poses a highly unmet clinical need, and only few large, prospective studies have been performed in this setting. Given the established activity of hypomethylating agents such as 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (decitabine) in myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia with 20-30% bone marrow blasts, we investigated whether this drug is also active in patients with more than 30% blasts. ⋯ Decitabine is well tolerated by older, medically non-fit patients with acute myeloid leukemia; myelosuppression is the major toxicity. The response rate and overall survival were not adversely influenced by poor-risk cytogenetics or myelodysplastic syndrome. Because of these encouraging results, randomized studies evaluating single-agent decitabine versus conventional treatment are warranted. The study is registered with the German Clinical Trials Registry, number DRKS00000069.