CONSTITUTIONAL INVERSION OF CHROMOSOME-7 AND HEMATOLOGIC CANCERS

Nonrandom aberrations of chromosome 7 have been described in various h ematopoietic disorders. We describe here two unrelated families with t he same constitutional inversion of chromosome 7 [inv(7)(q11.2q22)]. T he probands in both families had acute leukemia and cytogenetic analys is revealed that the inversion was the sole cytogenetic abnormality in the bone marrow at diagnosis, There is a history of hematologic disea ses in one of these families that included a son who is a carrier of t his constitutional inversion. The distal inversion breakpoint lies wit hin the common region of chromosome loss identified in some myeloid di seases. These observations raise the possibility that this inherited c hromosome rearrangement could result in a mutation of a tumor suppress or gene and possibly represent a predisposing event for the developmen t of leukemia in these individuals. (C) Elsevier Science Inc., 1997.