Prognostic implication of sequential bone marrow cultures in the myelodysplastic syndromes

Twenty-five patients with newly-diagnosed myelodysplastic syndromes were studied by the clonal culture method at least three times during the clinical course. Clinical outcomes of the patients were classified into: a stable disease (ten patients); subsequent leukemic transformation (eight patients) and nonleukemic death (seven patients). The growth of the marrow granulocyte-macrophage progenitors (CFU-GM) at the time of diagnosis was significantly related to the survival. In addition, sequential changes in the CFU-GM growth patterns correlated with the different clinical outcome of myelodysplastic syndromes patients.