[Erythroleukemia - a subtype of myelodysplastic syndrome?]

In order to study whether erythroleukemia was really a subtype of acute leukemia, the clinical laboratory characteristics and development of disease in 21 cases of erythroleukemia were analyzed. The results indicated that the percentage of patients with leucocytopenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia were 42.9%, 81% and 81% respectively at the time of diagnosis. These were 85.7% of patients with myelocytes and premonocyte, 52.4% of patients with erythroblast in their blood smear respectively. All of the bone marrow showed active or significantly active proliferation. The median percentage of erythro-lineage, myeloblast of NEC and displasia were (58.3 +/- 8.0)%, (58.0 +/- 18.4)% and 66.7% respectively, that is different from typical AML. 52.4% of M(6) patients transferred to RAEB/RAEB-T and AML-M(2) subtype in the disease progression. 11/19 cases (57.4%) achieved remission (CR 10; PR 1) after chemotherapy. The median remission length were 6 months for CR patients and 2 months for PR patients, but most of CR patients displayed obvious displasia of bone marrow and cytopenia of blood in the period of CR. The median survival length of M(6) and MDS-->M(6) from time of diagnosis were 13.0 +/- 13.2 and 2.3 +/- 1.3 months respectively. It is concluded that there are differences between M(6) and typical AML. Most of M(6) patients would rather be classified MDS RAEB and RAEB-t with over-hyperplasia of erythron lineage than a subtype of AML.