Acute Leukemia Characteristics are Different Around the World: the Mexican Perspective

The incidence of acute leukemia (AL) has increased. Its prognosis is variable and depends on several baseline characteristics with a highly heterogeneous presentation. In Mexico, large-scale descriptive studies have not yet been published; the objective of this study was to analyze the initial basic characteristics of patients diagnosed with AL in our population.

In this multicenter, retrospective study, 1018 patients ≥ 16 years of age and diagnosed with AL between 2009 and 2014, were included. We described age, gender, complete blood count, and AL subtype according to flow cytometry analysis.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) was as common as acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (51% vs. 49%). The median age was 31 years. Only 9.6% of patients with ALL were positive for the Philadelphia chromosome. No gender differences were observed. The median age at presentation of AML was 43 years. Acute promyelocytic leukemia was the most frequent AML subtype (38.3%), with a median age of 37 years.

ALL is equally as frequent as AML in patients ≥16 years of age. Philadelphia-positive prevalence is less frequent than that reported in literature. AML cases occur in a younger age in comparison with other countries. There is a higher rate of acute promyelocytic leukemia among our patients compared with other non-Latin American populations. This study is the largest ever performed in Mexico regarding descriptive AL data.