¹Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation, University Hospital of Essen, Essen, Germany

Correspondence: Dr AH Elmaagacli, Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation, University Hospital Essen, Hufelandstr. 55, 45122 Essen, Germany. E-mail ahmet.elmaagacli@uni-essen.de

Received 2 March 2004; Accepted 6 July 2004; Published online 1 November 2004.

Abstract

Atypical chronic myeloid leukemia (aCML) occurs rarely and is associated with a poor prognosis when treated with conventional chemotherapy. We evaluated the outcome of aCML after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Nine patients were transplanted from HLA-identical siblings (n=4), HLA-compatible unrelated donors (n=4) or twin brother (n=1). Median follow-up was 55 months after transplant (range, 9.1–118.1 months). One patient who was transplanted in advanced disease with bone marrow from his twin brother relapsed 19 months post transplant. This patient was successfully retransplanted from the original donor. All patients remained in complete remission. Analysis of the leukocyte chimerism of peripheral white blood cells and bone marrow buffy coat cells by VNTR-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and single-nucleotide polymorphism real-time PCR revealed complete chimerism in all patients who had received an allogeneic transplant. One patient suffering from cerebral toxoplasmosis died 9 months post transplant. All other patients were alive at the time of analysis. Our findings suggest that the outcome of allogeneic or syngeneic transplantation in patients with aCML may not be worse than the outcome of transplantation for BCR-ABL-positive CML.