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Leukocytosis is associated with poor survival but not with increased risk of thrombosis in essential thrombocythemia: a population-based study of 311 patients

Leukemia volume 24, pages 900–903 (2010)Cite this article

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Essential thrombocythemia (ET) is a myeloproliferative neoplasm characterized by a sustained increase in platelet count and long-term survival. The long-standing threshold platelet count to define thrombocytosis of 600 × 109/l was recently lowered to 450 × 109/l by the World Health Organization in the 2008 classification. Thromboses, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelofibrosis are the main complications of ET. Life expectancy of ET patients is good, with median survival ranging from 13 to 22.3 years.1, 2, 3 Consequently, long-term follow-up studies that focus on ET-related complications and/or survival of ET patients must be conducted to register a sufficient number of events to provide informative results and statistical analyses. Many studies on outcomes in ET have been published, including well-conducted large-scale studies. However, most were single-institution studies that focused on patients referred to hospitals, which does not necessarily reflect the course of ET in the general population. Indeed, in these studies, the median age at diagnosis was younger (50–57-years old) than usually noted for ET patients in population-based studies (67–73-years old).4, 5 Moreover, long-term outcomes in ET patients from population-based studies, usually involving <100 patients, are rarely investigated. Finally, in these studies, survival was generally based on observed mortality, a good but incomplete representation of overall mortality: given the old age (>65 years) of half of the patients at the time of diagnosis, more specific analyses such as relative mortality, that describes mortality directly associated with the disease, thus ruling out biases related to age or other illnesses, should be carried out.

Taking the above into account, we carried out a long-term (1980–2007) retrospective study on 311 ET patients (174 females and 137 males) registered in the Registry of Hematological Malignancies of the Côte d'Or area, France, the world oldest registry specialized in hematology.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Mrs Dominique Bouchot, Martine Courtois, Isabelle Helot and Aurélie Herry (CHU Dijon), for excellent technical help, and Philip Bastable for revisions. This work was supported by a grant from the Ligue contre le Cancer, Comité de Côte d'Or.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d'Hématologie, Hôpital du Bocage, CHU de Dijon, France

    F Girodon, F Dutrillaux, J Broséus, V Goussot, P Bardonnaud & M Maynadié

  2. Registre des hémopathies malignes de Côte d'Or, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

    F Girodon, M Mounier & M Maynadié

  3. Service d'Hématologie Clinique, Hôpital du Bocage, CHU de Dijon, France

    M L Chrétien

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  1. F Girodon
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Correspondence to F Girodon.

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Girodon, F., Dutrillaux, F., Broséus, J. et al. Leukocytosis is associated with poor survival but not with increased risk of thrombosis in essential thrombocythemia: a population-based study of 311 patients. Leukemia 24, 900–903 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/leu.2010.5

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