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Acute myeloid leukemia

New treatments for acute myeloid leukemia: how much has changed?

Leukemia volume 35, pages 45–46 (2021)Cite this article

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A strength of Evolving treatment patterns and outcomes in older AML: changing everything to change nothing? is documenting the suspected increasing use of non-intensive induction therapy in persons age ≥60 years from 1% 1999 to 2006 to 23% from 2007, when azacytidine and decitabine became widely available in Spain, to 2013 [1]. Use of intensive chemotherapy decreased from 58% to 32%. Supportive care and clinical trial percentages remained constant (27–28% and 0–2%, respectively). Despite the more common use of non-intensive induction, survival was unchanged, with a median of 4.3 months, 1-year survival of 29% and 5-year survival of 7%. This explains the subtitle changing everything to change nothing?

As the authors acknowledge, the data derive from a cooperative group registry, rather than a population-based system and thereby include only hospitalized persons. The typescript might have benefitted from multivariable analyses comparing survival in the two intervals after accounting for differences in potentially confounding covariates such as age distribution or cytogenetics or, similarly, comparing less versus more intense induction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hematology Division, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    Elihu Estey

  2. Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA

    Elihu Estey

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  1. Elihu Estey
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Correspondence to Elihu Estey.

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Estey, E. New treatments for acute myeloid leukemia: how much has changed?. Leukemia 35, 45–46 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41375-020-01084-2

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