Therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia following HIV-associated lymphoma

In the highly active antiretroviral therapy era, an increasingly large number of HIV-infected patients are developing non- AIDS-defining cancers (NADCs). As patients survive longer, long-term therapy-related complications take on greater importance. Herein, we describe a patient with AIDS who presented to medical attention with pancytopenia 48 months postchemotherapy with etoposide, prednisone, vincristine, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and rituximab (R-EPOCH) for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Bone marrow biopsy showed a moderately hypocellular marrow; 51% of the nucleated cells were blasts with myelomonocytic differentiation. Cytogenetic studies revealed an abnormal karyotype with deletion of the long arm of chromosome 11 (11q21) and 2 additional copies of the MLL gene attached to the short arms of chromosome 10 in 80% of the metaphase cells examined. With the diagnosis of therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (AML) secured, he began induction chemotherapy with idarubicin and cytarabine. Two weeks later, he died of fungal septicemia and multiorgan failure. Through a literature search, we were able to identify 4 additional cases of therapy-related AML in AIDS patients following chemotherapy for lymphomas. The median age of these patients at the time of AML diagnosis was 39 years (range, 33-59 years), the median time from the treatment of lymphoma to AML was 18 months (range, 11-48 months), and the median survival following induction chemotherapy was 4 weeks (range, 2-16 weeks). With many HIV-infected patients surviving alkylator and topoisomerase inhibitor-based treatment and radiation therapy for AIDS-defining cancers and NADCs, long-term follow-up for therapy-related complications assumes greater importance.