Young adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia have an excellent outcome with chemotherapy alone and benefit from intensive postinduction treatment: a report from the children's oncology group.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Patients 16 to 21 years of age with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have an inferior outcome compared with younger children, leading some medical oncologists to advocate allogeneic stem-cell transplantation in first remission for these patients. We examined outcome for young adults with ALL enrolled onto the Children's Cancer Group (CCG) 1961 study between 1996 and 2002.

Patients and methods

CCG 1961 entered patients with ALL 1 to 21 years of age with initial WBC count > or = 50,000/microL and/or age > or = 10 years. Randomly assigned therapies evaluated the impact of postinduction treatment intensification on outcome. We examined outcome and prognostic factors for 262 young adults with ALL.

Results

Five-year event-free and overall survival rates for young

SUBMITTER: Nachman JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3053149 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature