Juvenile Type of Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia in a Four Year Old Boy

Abstract

Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) is a rare disease in children. Three varieties of CML occur in childhood. Juvenile (Infantile), adult and familial types, each with distinct clinical and laboratory findings. Prognosis of all these types of CML in childhood is uniformly bad. The mean survival of a juvenile CML is 9 months and that of adult variety is 2.5 years. The adult form of childhood CML responds to therapy, but the patient succumbs to the disease during the blast crisis. Various modalities of treatments are being tried in the juvenile CML without any beneficial effect. We report a case of juvenile CML with characteristic findings in a four year old boy.