BACKGROUND Although the platelet count does not correlate with the rate of thrombosis, there is evidence that a strict control of the platelet count decreases the incidence of thromboembolic complications in essential thrombocythemia. In the current study, the authors evaluated the efficacy and tolerability of anagrelide in thrombocytosis associated with myeloproliferative disorders. METHODS ...

Polycythemia vera is a prototype and also the most common of the four classical myeloproliferative disorders—chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia (ET), and primary myelofibrosis (PMF). Our understanding of the last three disorders has lagged behind in comparison to our understanding of the molecular basis of CML, which led to the development of t...

A comprehensive database inquiry at our institutions identified 11 patients with echocardiogram-documented idiopathic cardiomyopathy that post-dated a diagnosis of either polycythemia vera or essential thrombocythemia. Anagrelide therapy was temporally associated with the particular complication in 6 patients, all of whom experienced symptomatic and/or objective improvement after drug discontin...

We report a case of Epstein-Barr-virus-(EBV-) positive primary cutaneous plasmablastic lymphoma in a human-immunodeficiency-virus-(HIV-) negative, immunocompetent 62-year-old female patient. We postulate that her lymphoma development is due to the longstanding use of pyrimethamine for essential thrombocythemia. This has never been described in the literature.

We present the case where immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) and essential thrombocythemia (ET) sequentially appeared in the space of twenty-one years of follow-up. Impaired platelet production is present in both diseases, but clinical presentation and treatment are different. On the basis of this case history a possible role of autoimmunity as a predisposing factor to myeloproliferation has been di...

We evaluated factor IX activation peptide and soluble adhesion molecules of the selectin class (endothelial, leukocyte and platelet) in a group of patients affected by chronic myeloproliferative disorders (essential thrombocythemia and polycythemia vera) with high platelet counts in a stable condition. Using these markers, we could not demonstrate evidence of hypercoagulability or endothelial d...