Increasing the upper age limit for recipients of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) naturally has also increased the age of the corresponding related donor population. Because aging is a risk factor for malignancies, the risk of transferring preexisting malignant or premalignant hemopoietic clones in the process of HCT might be expected to increase as well. Anecdotal clinical cases of malignancies derived from donor cells in patients undergoing HCT have been published since 1971. In this article, we report 12 new cases that fit 2 different categories: (1) cases in which clones with characteristics of lymphohemopoietic malignancies were transferred from the donors to the recipients and (2) cases in which the malignant clone evolved from healthy donor cells once transplanted into the recipient. Donors in the first group were significantly older than donors in the second group. A more systematic examination of the prevalence and biology of donor malignancies would merit study.

Memory span and articulation rates for one‐, two‐ and three‐syllable words were measured in three groups of 15 children: (i) children identified as having specific reading disability (SRD children), (ii) a group of chronological age‐matched (CA) controls and (iii) a group of younger normal readers matched to the SRD children for reading age (RA controls). All children had IQ scores in the normal range. The results showed that mean memory span for the SRD group was poor relative to CA controls, but approximately equal to the RA group. Similarly, the articulation rates of SRD children were slower than those of CA controls and approximately equal to those of RA controls. More importantly, mean articulation rate accounted for memory‐span differences between groups. The results suggest that the poor memory span observed in SRD children may be the result of slow speech rates. Possible relationships between reading ability, speech rate and memory span are discussed.

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