Prognostic factors in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Part I: Univariate analysis. Children's Cancer and Leukemia Study Group.

The pretreatment characteristics of 158 children with previously untreated acute lymphoblastic leukemia diagnosed April 1972 to June 1978 were analyzed for their ability to predict prognosis. The children were treated according to therapeutic protocols 721, 745 and 765, by members of the Japanese Children's Cancer and Leukemia Study Group. A univariate analysis was performed to determine the relationship between the characteristics and the duration of the patients' survival. The following characteristics were analyzed: initial white blood cell (WBC) count, age at diagnosis, initial hemoglobin level, initial platelet count, sex, organomegaly, and treatment regimen that was provided. Favorable prognosis was exhibited only by those patients with initial WBC counts of less than 50,000/mm3, with age at onset between 2 and 6 years, without splenomegaly, and with hemoglobin levels between 5 and 10 g/dl. The most significant contributions among the various individual prognostic factors were initial WBC count (p less than 0.001) and the age at diagnosis (p less than 0.01).