Leukaemia cytogenetics / H. Jackson Woodliff.

  • Woodliff, H. Jackson.
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Leukaemia cytogenetics / H. Jackson Woodliff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PRELEUKAEMIA AND LEUKAEMOID REACTION 91 containing both extra and missing autosomes and marker chromo¬ somes, showed no change after five months. On the other hand, some of Nowell's patients with karyotypic abnormahties soon died of leukaemia and possibly were leukaemic at the time of the examination. Further experience is obviously required before the role of cytogenetic studies in the diagnosis and prognosis of aplastic anaemia can be fully defined, but the demonstration of an abnor¬ mal ceil line may indicate a developing or overt malignant process. Many drugs and chemicals which can cause bone marrow depres¬ sion can also cause chromosome damage and some may be leukae- mogenic. Of these, benzene is the best documented (Forni and Moreo, 1967); phenylbutazone has been suggested but only rarely causes chromosome damage in cells exposed to it (Woodliff, \969Ъ). Chloramphenicol, methotrexate, lysergide and other psychotrophic drugs which are thought to cause damage may be preleukaemic (Cohen et al, 1961 a and è; Irwin and Egozcue, 1967; Egozcue et aï., 1968; Nielsen et ah, 1968; Nielsen et ah, 1969; Garson and Robson, 1969). Bone Marrow Dysplasias Some blood dysplasias are associated with a decrease in the number of cells in the blood without bone marrow hypoplasia. The term myeloplasia has been given to these conditions which are a group of disorders exhibiting morphologic evidence in the marrow and the blood of disturbed formation, if any, or any combination of the major blood cell lineages (erythroid, granulo¬ cytic, megakaryocytic), not characteristic of the aplastic, the myeloproliferative, or the leukaemic states, yet displaying features often intermediate or transitional between these conditions. They include such conditions as refractory hyperplastic anaemia, refractory megaloblastic anaemia, siderochrestic anaemia, atypical myeloid disorder, preleukaemic acute leukaemia and primary splenic hematopenia (Rowley et ah, 1966; Heath et ah, 1969). Three patients with refractory anaemia and granulocytic hyper¬ plasia of the bone marrow and a low leucocyte alkaline phospha¬ tase were studied by Freireich et ah (1964è); each had a missing chromosome in the С group. Anaemia and thrombocytopenia had been present for one, two and six years duration; the first two developed overt leukaemia but the other patient's picture remained the same after six years of observation. Six cases of potentially