PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF S-PHASE CELLS IN AML PATIENTS

Until now, reports on the cell cycle distribution of AML patients have shown highly variable results which are probably related to the techn ical heterogeneity of such studies. The aim of the present paper was t o analyse in 204 AML patients at diagnosis the proliferative rate (ass essed by the number of S-phase cells) of peripheral blood (PB) (126 ca ses) and bone marrow (BM) (78 cases) cells in order to explore its rel ationship with disease characteristics. A strong parallelism was obser ved regarding the relationship between the proliferative rate of the b last cells both in PB and in BM and the disease characteristics. Cases with a high proliferative rate were associated with advanced age, hig h WBC counts and LDH serum levels, monocytic leukaemias (assessed both by morphological and immunophenotypic criteria) and NK-associated ant igens (CD56, CD16). The proliferative activity did not influence the C R rate; in contrast, cases with a high number of S-phase cells had sho rter survival. In addition, multivariate analysis showed that age, the expression of CD11b, and the S-phase counts are the only three progno stic factors displaying an independent impact on survival.