[Efficacy of Arsenic Trioxide Combined with ATRA and Chemotherapy for Relapsed Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia Patients]

To investigate the efficacy and safety of arsenic trioxide combined with ATRA and chemo- therapy for treatment of relapsed acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) patients.

The clinic data of 25 patients with relapse APL treated in our hospital from 1996 to 2013 were collected and analyzed. Among the 25 patients, 15 patients suffered first-time hematological relapse (HR), and the other 10 patients showed first-time molecular relapse (MR). The patients with first-time replase were treated with ATO+ATRA+Anthracycline re-induction chemotherapy. The clinical features, complete remission (CR) rate, overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and adverse events after re-induction therapy were analyzed.

Fourteen of 15 hematological relapsed patients achieved the second-time hematological complete remission (CR2) after re-induction therapy except one patient died of bleeding complication during the re-induction. 8 of 14 patient showed molecular complete remission (CRm) after two cycles of therapy with this regimen. Totally, eleven out of the 14 HR patients were alive without disease till the last follow-up, and 3 of the 14 HR patients died because of bleeding complications. All of the 10 molecular relapsed patients received the second CRm after treated by the regimen. Among these 10 patients, 6 patients suffered only once relapse and continued with the molecular CR2 status, and for the other 4 patients with more than two-relapses, only 1 survived untill 89.3 months after achieved second-time CRm, and other 3 patients died because of bleeding complications.

For relapsed APL patients, the treatment with ATO+ATRA+chemotherapy regimen after relapse still shows encouraging efficacy, no matter whether or not the application of ATO in the previous regimens. In addition, patients with more than two molecular relapses show a poor prognosis.