[Clinical and hematologic features of adult T cell leukemia]

Adult T cell leukemia (ATL) is a new disease entity with the following characteristic clinical and hematologic flutures: 1) Acute or subacute T cell leukemia in adulthood 2) Endemic in Kyushu and Southwest of Shikoku 3) Frequent skin infiltration 4) Common hepatosplenomegaly and lymphadenopathy (not so marked) 5) Mild or moderate bone marrow infiltration 6) Hypercalcemia 7) Typical leukemia cells with deeply-indented or lobulated nuclei and heterogeneous(pleomorphic) cells 8) No mediastinal mass 9) Ineffective ordinary treatment and short survival time Surface phenotypes of ATL cells were OKT 3(+) 4(+) 5(-) 8(-) Tac(+) and leukemia cells suppressed PWM-induced Ig synthesis in about half cases. Chromosome analysis showed the high incidence of abnormalities such as trisomy 7 and 14q +. ATL was compared with cutaneous T cell leukemia, T-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia and lymphosarcoma cell leukemia in clinical features, hematologic and immunologic characteristics and the association with type C retrovirus.