Acute Myeloid Leukemia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Acute Myeloid Leukemia, including details on aml, symptoms, treatment, information.

Acute megakaryoblastic leukemia in Down syndrome.

Hitzler JK

Division of Hematology/Oncology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5G 1X8. johann.hitzler@sickkids.da

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have a 10- to 20-fold increased risk of developing acute leukemia. An estimated 10% of newborns with DS develop Transient Myeloproliferative Disease (TMD) or Transient Leukemia (TL), a clonal accumulation of megakaryoblasts that resolves spontaneously within months. Acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) develops in approximately 20% of cases of TMD/TL by 4 years of age. Both the blasts of AMKL and TMD/TL in DS harbor somatic mutations of GATA1, an essential transcriptional regulator of megakaryocytic differentiation. The distinct phenotypes of megakaryoblastic leukemia in DS are a unique biological model of the incremental process of leukemic transformation.

Published 23 October 2007 in Pediatr Blood Cancer, 49(7): 1066-9.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Acute Myeloid Leukemia Research Today. All Rights Reserved.