A significance of additional chromosomal aberrations and other variables on post transplantation outcome of patients with CML.

Chronic myeloic leukemia (CML) is a malignant disease of hematopoietic stem cell characterized by the bcr/abl gene rearrangement. Allogeneic transplantation of stem cells (SCT) is a routinely used treatment method of patients with this diagnosis and remains the only curative mode of treatment. From January 1990 to December 2002, 78 patients with CML underwent allogeneic transplantation and were examined at the Department of Genetics in the National Cancer Institute in Bratislava. Using conventional cytogenetic and FISH 6 patients (7.7%) showed additional chromosomal changes before SCT. These patients had statistically worse post transplantation prognosis compared to the patients without additional changes before SCT (mean survival in month+/-standard error (58.08 (+/-6.70) vs. 5.17 (+/-0.98), p-value=0.001), patient mortality (67% vs. 31%)). In addition five other variables were evaluated for transplant outcome, namely, patient's age at the time of transplantation, sibling or non-sibling donor, higher than 1st chronic phase CML, time from diagnosis to transplantation and sex of donor and recipient. Only the comparison of HLA-identical sibling transplantation to unrelated donor transplantation was statistically significant (mean survival in month- 56.6 (+/-7.2) vs. 13 (+/-0.0), patient mortality 31% vs. 67%).