BACKGROUND

During the last few years, improvement in prognosis of the adult acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) has been modest. The probability of leukemia-free survival is 20-40%. Philadelphia-chromosome positive (BCR-ABL positive) ALL has the worse prognosis. A single centre experience with treatment of ALL in adults is reported.

METHODS AND RESULTS

Between April 1997 and July 2000, 15 consecutive patients with de novo adult ALL (7 T-lineage ALL, 7 B-lineage ALL, 1 null ALL) begin their treatment with the seven-drug induction regimen (in phase I, daunorubicin, vincristine, L-asparaginase, i.v., and prednisone, p.o.; in phase II, 6-mercaptopurine, p.o., cytosine arabinoside and cyclophosphamide, i.v.) and central nervous system (CNS) prophylaxis (methotrexate and CNS irradiation in patients without total body irradiation in conditioning regimen), with intensive consolidation (three times high-dose methotrexate and high-dose-cytarabine, i.v.), and with/out autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) followed by maintenance chemotherapy (6-mercaptopurine and methotrexate, p.o.). Seven patients received autologous PBSCT. Median patient age was 30 years. Three patients were BCR-ABL positive at diagnosis. With median follow-up 14 month (range 0.1-46 month), seven (4 T-lineage ALL, 2 B-lineage ALL, 1 null ALL) out of 15 patients are alive in remission (four of them receiving autologous PBSCT). Causes of death were relapse (n = 3), chemotherapy related toxicity (n = 2), infection (n = 1), and acute myeloid leukaemia developed 10 months after autologous PBSCT (n = 1). All BCR-ABL positive patients died.

CONCLUSIONS

Chemotherapy alone and autologous PBSCT with maintenance therapy may be curative for adult patients with ALL. We can recommend these treatment options for patients without risk factors in particular.