ZAP-70 mRNA expression provides clinically valuable information in early-stage chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

| 1422 | haematologica | 2008; 93(9) ment options. We observed that those of our patients treated with rituximab-based regimens who were assigned to the high risk group had a median overall and cause-specific survival of less than four years. When such patients were treated with alkylating agents or with nucleoside analogs median overall survival was also less than four years. This observation indicates that rituximab-based regimens, as well as nucleoside analog/alkylating agent based regimens, may be a suboptimal treatment for such high risk patients. For these patients new treatment approaches are needed. Meletios Athanasios Dimopoulos, Efstathios Kastritis, Sossana Delimpassi, Athanasios Zomas, Marie Christine Kyrtsonis, Konstantinos Zervas Department of Clinical Therapeutics, University of Athens School of Medicine, Hematology Department, Evangelismos Hospital, Attikon University Hospital, Department of Hematology, University of Athens, Laikon Hospital, Department of Hematology, Theagenion Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece