Bone marrow necrosis (BMN) is a relatively uncommon clinicopathologic entity. The etiology is diverse, and malignancy, especially hematopoietic in origin, is the most common underlying disease of BMN. In this retrospective analysis, cases with BMN were re-evaluated for etiology, histopathologic details, and clinical manifestations. In the last 8 years, 23 cases of BMN were detected among the 1,083 bone marrow (BM) biopsies, and the prevalence was found to be 2.2%. Three of these 23 cases with BMN were children, and 20 cases were in adults. Sixteen of these cases (80%) had underlying malignant disease, and four (20%) had nonmalignant disease. Among the malignant cases, three cases had acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML), four had relapsed Hodgkin's disease (R-HD), one had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), two had chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML), two had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), three had disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) associated with metastatic solid tumor, and one had myelodysplastic syndrome/myeloproliferative syndrome (MDS/MPS). Among the nonmalignant cases, two had tuberculosis infection, one had anti-phospholipid syndrome (APS), and one had a history of drug ingestion. The most common symptoms were bone pain, fever, fatigue, and jaundice. The most common laboratory findings were variable and associated with underlying disease, but anemia, leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, and high LDH and alkaline phosphatase levels were detected in the majority of the cases, as was also seen in other series. BMN was graded according to the extent of necrosis in the BM biopsy, and necrosis was extensive in 12 cases, moderate in five cases, and mild in three cases. Increased reticulin was found in 16 cases; four cases had severe, eight had moderate, and four had mild fibrosis, and this was found to be an interesting accompanying finding in BMN. In conclusion malignancy is the most common cause of BMN but some nonmalignant conditions such as tuberculosis and APS may be the underlying cause of BMN. Am.

The PRAME (preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma) gene has been shown to be expressed in high levels in some solid tumors and hemopoietic neoplasias but not or only weakly expressed in normal tissues. It encodes an antigen recognized by autologous cytolytic T lymphocytes. PRAME is a good candidate for tumor immunotherapy and is a useful marker gene for detection of minimal residual disease (MRD). In this study, PRAME mRNA using real-time RT-PCR was studied in 74 adult cases with acute leukemia-68 had de-novo acute leukemia, 3 had chronic myeloid leukemia-blastic crisis (CML-BC), and 3 had myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative syndrome-blastic transformation (MDS/MPD-BT)-and the results were compared with 30 age-matched healthy volunteers. Nineteen of 74 cases with leukemia expressed PRAME, while only 2 controls showed weak expression. The prevalence of PRAME expression in AML and ALL cases was 30% and 17%, respectively. We did not find any important correlation between PRAME expression and clinical characteristics, such as age, sex, organomegaly/lymphadenopathy, Hb, WBC count, platelet count, LDH level, alkaline phosphatase, albumin, cell-surface antigens, response to therapy, or progression-free and overall survival. PRAME was monitored in 15 cases during remission and/or relapse. There was a good correlation between PRAME mRNA and hematological remission and/or relapse. Interestingly, PRAME was very high in one case with AML but was not found 3 months after allogeneic transplantation. PRAME mRNA is observed in about one-third of AML cases; it may be a useful marker to detect MRD, and it may also be a good predictor for the timing of donor lymphocyte infusions (DLI) in the post-transplant period in cases of molecular relapse. Am.

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Both survivin and aven are important antiapoptotic signals in acute leukemias, and the association between extramedullary involvement, CD7 expression and CD34 expression, which are important poor prognostic indicators in acute leukemias, suggests that survivin and/or aven may be novel prognostic indicators in acute leukemias. Further studies with a higher number of patients will be more informative.

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