Jumping translocations in leukemia.

Jumping translocations are an unusual phenomenon and have been rarely reported in leukemia. We report three patients whose leukemic cells had multiple related clones resulting from unbalanced jumping translocations of 1q and 7q to chromosomes 1, 8, 15, 21 and 22. The chromosome findings, together with limited published reports, suggest that jumping translocations are new non-random rearrangements and may represent poor prognostic biological markers. Although their origin is unknown, circumstantial evidence suggests that telomeric ends of receptor chromosomes may play a role in stabilizing jumping translocations in dividing malignant cells.