Clinical characteristics and analysis of treatment result in children with Ph-positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in Poland between 2005 and 2017

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyse the clinical characteristics and outcome of children diagnosed with Ph+ ALL.

Material and methods: A total of 2591 newly diagnosed ALL children were treated in Poland between the years 2005 and 2017. Of those, 44 were diagnosed with Ph(+) ALL. The patients were treated according to protocols: ALL IC-BFM 2002 and 2009 (26 patients), EsPhALL (12 patients), initially ALL IC-BFM and then EsPhALL (6 patients).

Results: The median of follow-up in the observed group was 3 years. Overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS) of Ph+ ALL group were 0.73 and 0.64. OS and EFS of patients after HSCT were 0.78 and 0.66, while without HSCT were 0.6 and 0.6, P = 0.27 and 0.63. OS was 0.8 for patients treated with chemotherapy plus imatinib and 0.61 for chemotherapy alone, P = 0.22, while EFS was 0.66 (imatinib therapy) and 0. 61 (without imatinib), P = 0.41.

Conclusion: Our study suggests that adding imatinib to intensive chemotherapy seems to improve outcome. However, this study was limited by a small number of patients and a variety of chemotherapy regimens with or without imatinib.

Keywords: Philadelphia chromosome; acute lymphoblastic leukaemia; chemotherapy; children; imatinib.