Two cases of extramedullary acute promyelocytic leukemia.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M Benekli.
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We report here a 16-year-old boy with pre-B-type acute lymphoblastic leukemia who developed acute tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) following 12 h mitoxantrone infusion. TLS is a distinct clinical entity which has been recognized most frequently with aggressive combination chemotherapy of rapidly proliferating hematologic neoplasms. There have been a few reports of single-agent-induced tumor lysis, but to our knowledge, this is the first case reported with mitoxantrone alone.
AIMS AND BACKGROUND: Ifosfamide is an active alkylating agent in the treatment of breast cancer, as a first-line therapy and in advanced disease. Since the combination of etoposide with an alkylating agent produces a synergistic and tolerable activity in various malignancies, in the present study, ifosfamide and etoposide were administered to patients with advanced breast cancer to evaluate the response characteristics and the toxicity profile. STUDY DESIGN: The combination of ifosfamide, mesna and etoposide was prospectively administered to 41 previously treated patients with stage IV breast carcinoma. The treatment schedule consisted of ifosfamide, 1500 mg/m2, infused over 24 hrs with 1500 mg/m2 mesna on days 1 to 5 and 120 mg/m2 etoposide, infused over 1 hr on days 1 to 3, to be repeated every 4th week. RESULTS: After a median follow-up of 10 months, an objective response rate of 23% (overall 2.5% complete remission and 20.5% partial remission) and a median response duration of 5.3 months were obtained in 39 assessable patients. The non-responder group consisted of 28.3% stable disease and 48.7% progressive disease. The prior status of chemotherapy was the only significant prognostic factor with an impact on the response rate. The overall toxicity was generally mild, with grade 3 myelotoxicity encountered in 25.7% of patients. CONCLUSIONS: The tolerable side effect profile of the ifosfamide and etoposide combination might be advantageous as regards the quality of life. To improve the rate and/or the duration of response and to clarify the precise role of the ifosfamide-etoposide combination in previously treated advanced breast cancer, further trials are warranted.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether parvovirus B19 infection is associated with Behçet's disease (BD). METHODS: Serum samples from 41 patients with BD and from 40 age- and sex-matched controls were studied. An ELISA assay was used to detect antibodies against parvovirus B19. RESULTS: Six patients with BD (15.7%) had anti-B19 IgM antibodies in their serum samples indicating a recent infection, while no positivity for IgM antibodies was detected in the control group (p = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Although there have been several reports of B19 infection associated with vasculitis, our findings do not strongly support the involvement of B19 in the pathogenesis of BD. The serological evidence of acute infection in 6 BD patients may be purely coincidental. There was also no positive correlation with the articular and vascular manifestations of BD.