Response to treatment in acute non-lymphatic leukaemia: prognostic value of colony forming and colony stimulating capacities of bone marrow and blood cells compared to other parameters.

Growth of bone marrow and mononuclear white blood cells (MWBC) in soft-agar cultures was studied in 26 patients with untreated acute non-lymphocytic leukaemia (ANLL). Marrow and MWBC from 30 healthy volunteers served as controls. All ANLL patients revealed an abnormal growth in vitro. Patients with an increased number of clones in marrow cultures and large cluster predominance ('excessive growth') responded poorly to therapy with only one of 10 patients entering remission. On the contrary, only two of the 15 patients with a decreased clone number ('low growth') failed to achieve remission. The number of colonies and clusters in both bone marrow and blood cultures was significantly lower at presentation in patients who later entered remission than in those who did not. The correlations between the number of colonies and clusters in the blood and the marrow cultures were statistically significant. No significant correlations were found between prognosis or colony formation, on one hand, and the production of colony stimulating activity (CS)bA), by bone marrow and blood cells of ANLL patients, on the other. Nor could such correlations be found between prognosis, blood cell counts, and age. It is concluded that the growth pattero cytostatic drugs and particularly in selecting patients with a high probability to respond poorly to current cytostatic regimes.