Cytogenetic analysis in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia: experience at a single institution in Korea

Abstract

We evaluated major cytogenetic abnormalities associated with childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) through both fluorescent in situ hybridization and conventional chromosomal analysis for 132 ALL patients diagnosed at St Mary's Hospital in Korea. Chromosome abnormalities have been detected in 92% of patients. Eighteen (14%) patients showed numerical abnormalities only, 50 (38%) patients showed structural abnormalities only, and 53 (40%) patients showed both. The simultaneous trisomies 4, 10 and 17 were observed in 23 (17%) patients. Of the patients with abnormal karyotypes, recurrent structural abnormalities were determined in 103 (78%) cases. t(12;21)(q13;q22) was found in 29 (22%) out of 132 patients, 9p abnormalities in 13 (10%) patients, t(1;19)(q23;p13.3) in 11 (8%) patients, t(9;22)(q34;q11.2) in 11 (8%) patients, and 11q23 abnormalities in 7 (5%) patients. Interestingly, we identified five uncommon translocations such as t(5;12) (q33;p13), t(14;19)(q32;q13.1), t(12;16)(p13;q13), der(1)t(1;12)(p32;p13), and t(5;15)(p15;q11.2). Our study pool is representative of pediatric ALL patients in Korea as it consists of about 20% of patients diagnosed annually in Korea. We believe that the data provided will aid in comparative studies of the treatment outcomes, as well as the type and incidence of chromosomal abnormalities associated with childhood ALL in various Asian nations and Western countries.

Importance of FISH combined with Morphology, Immunophenotype and Cytogenetic Analysis of Childhood/Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Omani Patients

“…Especially, B-lineage ALL is more frequent, accounting for 85% of childhood ALL and 75% of adult ALL (WHO, 2008). However, the incidence of chromosomal abnormalities was higher than previously reported studies (Foristier et al, 1997;Mehdipour et al, 2003;Gimidene et al 2008), similar results (Perez-Vera et al, 2001;Al-Bahar et al, 2010) and lower than some studies (Chang et al, 2006;Kwon et al, 2009;Braekeleer et al, 2010). In our study, the bone marrow cultures for nine patients either yielded no metaphases or the quality of the chromosomes was too poor with clumped metaphases, which is commonly known in most of the ALL cases (Petkovic et al, 1996) and the percentage of diploid karyotype (25.8%) presently tended to decrease compared to the earlier years, likely attributable to technical progress such as improvement of culture conditions, cell synchronization, and the introduction of integrated FISH screening method may have led to a higher incidence rate of chromosomal abnormalities in our study similar to previous studies (Hashem, 2012).…”

Ectrodactyly with Infant Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Associated With Very Rare translocation of t (5; 15) (p15; q11.2) : A case report

“…On the other hand while hyperleukocytosis was detected in two of the cases, other two cases were not known. The remaining patients with t(5; 15) did not have hyperleukocytosis reported so far (6,9,10), like our patient. Extramedullary infiltration was reported only one of these patients.…”

Treatment of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia with risk group based intensification and omission of cranial irradiation: A Korean study of 295 patients

“…An important reason for the relatively higher number of patients who received allogeneic HCT in first CR in our study is our inclusion of Ph+ ALL patients for upfront HCT. The incidence of Ph+ ALL in our study group was 8.5%, as reported previously by our institution . Although imatinib combined with chemotherapy has shown outcomes comparable to allogeneic HCT, our current method is to treat with imatinib and chemotherapy and proceed to transplant, as shown to be effective in a previous study .…”