Background: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common malignancy in children, with a peak incidence at 2 to 3 years of age and accounting for almost 30% of all cancers in this age group. It is well established that the identification of cytogenetic abnormalities is highly relevant for the prognosis of and therapeutic decisions in ALL. The purpose of the present study was to define the frequency of recurrent chromosomal abnormalities of ALL in Moroccan patients referred exclusively to the BIOLAB Laboratory of the Children's Hospital of Rabat during a 4-year period and compare our findings to the reported data.
Patients and methods: We performed conventional karyotyping of 155 ALL cases, with a successful cell culture rate of 94%.
Results: We identified chromosomal abnormalities in 66% of the total studied cases, of which 70% revealed important recurrent abnormalities with high prognostic value, such as hyperdiploidy, hypodiploidy, t(9;22), t(8;14), t(1;19), and MLL rearrangements. In total agreement with the reported data, most of the patients (56%) in the present study were aged 1 to 5 years, with a male predominance, and B-ALL was the most common blast phenotype (85%).
Conclusion: The frequency of most chromosomal rearrangements successfully identified in our study and their lineage correlated with those reported in the published data.
Keywords: ALL; Children; Cytogenetic abnormalities; Morocco.
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