[Study on leukemic-colony forming unit in 31 patients with acute non-lymphocytic leukemia]

Thirty-one patients with acute non-lymphocytic leukemia (ANLL) were studied with Dicke's soft agar marrow culture to identify leukemic colony forming units. Eighteen of them had leukemic colony formation, in those patients, the average survival period was shorter (65d), and none of them achieved remission after chemotherapy. The remaining thirteen patients had no colony formation and had a longer survival period of 119.8 d. In the latter group four out of six who had undergone more than two courses of chemotherapy went into complete remission. Our study showed that patients who had leukemic colony formation had a worse prognosis than those who had no leukemic colony formation.