To describe the clinical and biologic features of pediatric acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) and to identify prognostic factors, experience at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital was reviewed. Of 281 patients with acute myeloid leukemia treated over a 14-year period, 41 (14.6%) had a diagnosis of AMKL. Six patients had Down syndrome and AMKL, 6 had secondary AMKL, and 29 had de novo AMKL...

Although major progress has been made in the treatment of childhood leukemia, the optimal chemotherapy of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in adults has been unclear. In addition, the value of central nervous system prophylaxis (CNS-P) in adults has been assumed, but not established in a systematic fashion. The Southeastern Cancer Study Group has completed a prospective study in which the use...

Since the introduction of combined immunosuppressive therapy consisting of oral cyclophosphamide (CYC) and glucocorticosteroids (GC) in the 1970s, the outcome of antineutrophil cystoplasmic antibodies (ANCA)-associated vasculitides has improved dramatically over the last decades. However, the long-term follow-up of patients treated with CYC plus GC has revealed a high treatment-related morbidit...

BACKGROUND The primary systemic vasculitides usually associated with autoantibodies to neutrophil cytoplasmic antigens include Wegener's granulomatosis and microscopic polyangiitis. We investigated whether exposure to cyclophosphamide in patients with generalized vasculitis could be reduced by substitution of azathioprine at remission. METHODS We studied patients with a new diagnosis of gener...

Thymectomy was performed on 249 patients with myasthenia gravis between 1957 and 1981. During a follow-up period that ranged from 2 months to 24 years (mean 7.5 years), the remission rate for the entire group was 51 percent, and an additional 36 percent had improvement (87 percent benefited). In those 51 patients with thymoma, the remission rate was 37 percent, with 68 percent of the patients b...

OBJECTIVES To identify predictors of clinical remission as well as of no x-ray progression in a cohort of early rheumatoid arthritis (ERA) treated with a tight-control protocol. METHODS A total of 121 consecutive patients with ERA were treated to reach European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) and/or American College of Rheumatology (ACR) clinical remission with methotrexate (MTX) for 3 mont...

The efficacy of corticosteroids in the treatment of ulcerative colitis has been established (Truelove and Witts, 1955), but the optimum dose has been less thoroughly studied. In a comparative trial of different methods of treatment Truelove (1960) reported a remission rate of 35% in out-patients using prednisolone 20 mg. daily, and Watkinson (1961a, 1961b) observed remission in 12 out of 36 pat...

Depression is an illness that causes symptoms in both the body and the brain, i.e., painful physical as well as emotional and vegetative symptoms. Ascending serotonergic and noradrenergic pathways may mediate the emotional and vegetative symptoms of depression and can potentially be targets of serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors to obtain relief of these symptoms. Descending seroto...

Treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to target is advocated using disease activity measures. The impact of RA on the general health status of affected patients in Jordan is not well described. This study reported the severity of RA in Jordan and its association with consequent disabilities and comorbidities. A cross-sectional, observational study was conducted at King Abdullah University Hospital...