Down's syndrome and acute leukaemia: a cytogenetic study.

The incidence of acute leukaemia in children with Down's syndrome is substantially greater than it is in normal children (Stewart, Webb, and Hewitt, 1958; Holland, Doll, and Carter, 1962), and the leukaemia complicating Down's syndrome is more often of myeloblastic type than is the case in childhood leukaemia generally (Boggs, Wintrobe, and Cartwright, 1962; Warkany, Schubert, and Thompson, 1963; Conen and Erkman, 1966). These indications that there may be fundamental differences between the leukaemias arising in association with trisomy 21 and those found in normal children have not been reflected in differences in the acquired cytogenetic abnormalities reported to date (Conen and Erkman, 1966). However, the combination of the two diseases is still rare and chromosome studies on further cases are required to evaluate fully the pattern of karyotypic abnormalities which may be present. This report describes studies performed on a 3year-old girl with acute leukaemia complicating Down's syndrome.