Clinical Significance of Cytogenetic Findings at Diagnosis and in Remission in Childhood and Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Experience from India

We report cytogenetic findings in 114 patients of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which includes 78 children (≤15 years) and 36 adults (16–60 years). Chromosome aberrations were detected in 109 (95%) cases. A lower frequency of hyperdiploidy (15%) in children and a higher frequency of hypodiploidy both in children (38.4%) and adults (44.4%) were found, in contrast to literature. Translocations were detected in one third of adult and pediatric cases. The incidence of t(9;22) was comparatively low in adults (7.7%). Frequency of t(1;19) was also low in overall ALL cases. Various other recurrent abnormalities such as del(6q), abn(11q23), i(9p), abn(12p13), del(7q), and i(17q) were seen in our cases; a striking difference in the incidence of del(6q) (41%) and abn(11q23) (30%) was found in our series versus reported literature. Ploidy distribution indicated association of pseudo- and hypodiploidy with B-lineage, and hypodiploidy with T-lineage in children. The occurrence of del(6q) was more frequent in pediatric ALL with highly aberrant pattern and also with lymphadenopathy. Abn(11q23) was found to be early-B and pre-B specific. Kaplan-Meier analysis of overall survival revealed prognostic value of sex, FAB, immunophenotype, and cytogenetic findings. Females and T-ALL patients had a better prognosis, whereas males and B-ALL patients had poor outcome in overall and pediatric age groups. Prognostic evaluation of cytogenetics indicated translocations as an independent high-risk predictor in childhood (P < 0.008) and adult ALL (P < 0.01). Childhood ALL with t(8;14) and t(4;11) and adults with t(9;22) had poor survival. Cytogenetics of remission marrows demonstrated disappearance of abnormal clones in 31.4%, and expansion in normal clones in 50% of patients. Persistence of original clones and development of new clones were observed in 20% and 33% of patients, respectively; whereas karyotype evolution was identified in 10% of patients. The prognostic significance of cytogenetic findings at diagnosis, and differential cytogenetic response in so-called clinical remission in our study indicated the utmost need for more intensive therapy for eradication of resistant clones, and necessity of sequential cytogenetic follow-up in these patients for identification of minimal residual disease.