Family Planning and Pregnancy in Patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

The goal of this review is to summarize what is known about pregnancy in women with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML): there are very few guidelines regarding how to treat women who are pregnant at the time of CML diagnosis, and similarly, few guidelines regarding family planning for women already on tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy who might want to start family planning.

Most patients with CML achieve excellent control with first line tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy that includes either imatinib, dasatinib, nilotinib, or bosutinib. For men, tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy does not affect sperm number or function, and female partners of men on therapy who become pregnant do not have an increased risk of miscarriage or babies with fetal malformation. However, for women, all TKIs are teratogenic and should be avoided at least in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, a small study suggests that women who have achieved a stable deep response therapy can safely stop therapy prior to a planned pregnancy and may not need any intervention during the pregnancy. Another small study suggests that nilotinib and imatinib have the lowest rate of transfer across the placenta. Providing well-documented guidelines for women with CML is challenging as TKI therapy is teratogenic. However, valuable information can be gained from small series of patients as summarized here.