Application of all-trans retinoic acid combining chemotherapy and As4S4 in the maintenance treatment of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia / 中华血液学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To compare the efficacy of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) combining chemotherapy and As4S4 with ATRA combining chemotherapy for the maintenance treatment of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Sixty patients with APL induced to complete remission by ATRA and consolidated by chemotherapy were randomly divided into two groups. Thirty patients as As4S4 group received ATRA + As4S4 + chemotherapy, and another thirty patients as non-As4S4 group were treated only with ATRA + chemotherapy as maintenance therapy. The therapeutic effects, side effects and PML-RARalpha gene expression were analyzed.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The three-year continuous complete remission (CCR) rate was 90.0% for As4S4 group and 61.1% for non-As4S4 group, the difference being statistically significant. Significant difference was also found in the positive rate of PML-RARalpha fusion gene between the two groups. The side effects were mild.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>APL patients in maintenance therapy with ATRA + 6-MP + MTX + As4S4 can obtain a higher CCR.</p>

Detection and screening for human cytomegalovirus infection in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients by different methods / 中国实验血液学杂志

The aim of study was to explore the better detection method for cytomegalovirus (CMV) in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) recipients and to compare the efficiency of fluorogenic quantitative PCR (FQ-PCR), flow cytometry (FCM) and ELISA. The plasma DNA loading and serum level of IgM antibody against CMV in 214 clinical specimens from 19 allo-HSCT patients were detected by real-time FQ-PCR and ELISA respectively, the pp65 antigen in 118 peripheral blood leukocyte samples were measured by FCM. The results showed that the positive rates of pp65 antigen, IgM antibody and DNA load were 30.85% (58/188), 13.08% (28/214) and 35.51% (76/214) respectively, the coincidence between their sequential detection positive rates and clinical diagnosis were 7/8, 7/8 and 3/8 respectively. There was no statistical significant difference between the positive rate of pp65 antigen and of DNA amount (P > 0.05), and they have manifested relationships (P < 0.05). The positive rate of IgM antibody detected by ELISA was obvious lower than that of DNA quantitated by FQ-PCR and pp65 antigen detected by FCM, but the difference between them showed statistical significance (P < 0.05), Smaller relativity was found between IgM antibody detection and the other two methods (P > 0.05). It is concluded that FQ-PCR and FCM are sensitive, rapid, suitable and reliable methods for monitoring recipient reactive CMV infection of allo-HSCT recipients and are worthy to extensively use for guiding antiviral therapy.