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Testicular relapse in philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

journal contribution
posted on 1993-01-01, 00:00 authored by D V O’Brien, Jeffrey CraigJeffrey Craig, L M Secker-Walker, B J Boughton
A case of Philadelphia-positive (Ph) acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in a 40-year-old male is presented. At diagnosis, 80% of bone marrow cells were Ph. Remission with normal blood counts was achieved but the marrow became hypercellular, indicating conversion to chronic granulocytic leukaemia (GCL). The Ph clone persisted with a variable percentage of Ph cells. He developed testicular relapse 38 months from diagnosis. The patient died when engraftment with a matched unrelated bone marrow transplant failed. Molecular in-vestigation of DNA prepared from diagnostic and remission bone marrow and from testicular tissue in relapse revealed the same sized rearranged fragment of the BCR gene using a probe to the major breakpoint cluster region. This case confirms that testicular involvement due to infiltration of the testes by the orig-inal Ph leukaemic clone may occur as an unusual complication in Ph ALL. Conversion to chronic-phase GCL, a rare occurrence in Ph ALL, may have contributed to the unusually long survival.

History

Journal

Acta Haematologica

Volume

89

Issue

2

Pagination

100 - 103

Publisher

S. Karger AG

Location

Basel, Switzerland

ISSN

0001-5792

eISSN

1421-9662

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

1993, S. Karger AG, Basel