Treatment of myelodysplastic syndromes

The IPSS scoring system is useful to establish the appropriate treatment plan in MDS. Growth factors may alleviate both anemia and neutropenia in some MDS patients. Serum Epo levels and need for transfusion serve as good predictors of the erythroid response to the combination of Epo and G-CSF. Subgroups of MDS patients may respond favorably to immunosuppressive therapies such as CyA and ATG. Low-dose chemotherapy may also improve peripheral blood counts. Platelet counts, bone marrow cellularity, chromosome aberrations, and ringed sideroblasts combine to create a model predicting the response to low-dose ara-C. High-dose chemotherapy may lead to complete remission in about half of MDS patients, but the duration of remission is often short. The only proven curative therapy for MDS is allogeneic stem cell transplantation, resulting in an overall disease-free survival rate of about 40%. Only a minority of patients, however, can undergo allogeneic transplantation, both because of patient age and the availability of suitable donors. Autologous stem cell transplantation may be an option for selected patients who are unable to find allogeneic donors. Because the clinical features of patients with MDS are quite heterogeneous, the development of more accurate predictive models may be necessary to improve the efficacy of treatment.