Bone marrow transplantation for therapy-induced acute myeloid leukemia in children with previous lymphoid malignancies.

Twenty-one children who developed therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia after treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia received allogeneic bone marrow transplants between January 1990 and June 1997. All had previously received epipodophyllotoxin-containing regimens and 11 had cytogenetic abnormalities involving 11q23. Induction chemotherapy was given to 13 patients and eight patients went directly to BMT. Eleven received marrow from matched siblings, eight from matched unrelated donors and two from haploidentical family members. Conditioning regimens included cyclophosphamide (CY), cytarabine, and total body irradiation. Four patients are alive disease-free between 1118 and 1825 days post-BMT resulting in a 3-year DFS of 19%. Ten patients relapsed at a median of 150 days (range 30-664 days) post-BMT and all eventually died of disease. Seven patients died of regimen-related toxicity. The outlook for patients with therapy-related AML/MDS remains poor and more effective therapy is needed.