[Minimal residual disease in chronic myelogenous leukemia]

The treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia(CML) is performed mainly by interferon (IFN) or/and allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Experimentally, some patients with CML are treated by autologous transplantation. Monitoring of minimal residual disease(MRD) in each patient is most important, regardless of the treatments. To detect MRD in CML patients, bcr-abl mRNA has been quantitated by competitive or real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) method. In patients who were treated by IFN, patients in whom the bcr-abl/abl ratio at the time of maximal response were lower than 0.045% were shown to have a significantly lower release rate. Allogeneic BMT patients, in whom the bcr-abl/abl ratio between 3 and 5 months after transplantation was less than 0.02% were recently found to have a significantly lower relapse rate at 3 year.