Venous thromboembolism in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in China: a report from the Chinese Children's Cancer Group-ALL-2015 / 医学前沿

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a complication in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The Chinese Children's Cancer Group-ALL-2015 protocol was carried out in China, and epidemiology, clinical characteristics, and risk factors associated with VTE were analyzed. We collected data on VTE in a multi-institutional clinical study of 7640 patients with ALL diagnosed in 20 hospitals from January 2015 to December 2019. First, VTE occurred in 159 (2.08%) patients, including 90 (56.6%) during induction therapy and 108 (67.92%) in the upper extremities. T-ALL had a 1.74-fold increased risk of VTE (95% CI 1.08-2.8, P = 0.022). Septicemia, as an adverse event of ALL treatment, can significantly promote the occurrence of VTE (P < 0.001). Catheter-related thrombosis (CRT) accounted for 75.47% (n = 120); and, symptomatic VTE, 58.49% (n = 93), which was more common in patients aged 12-18 years (P = 0.023), non-CRT patients (P < 0.001), or patients with cerebral thrombosis (P < 0.001). Of the patients with VTE treated with anticoagulation therapy (n = 147), 4.08% (n = 6) had bleeding. The VTE recurrence rate was 5.03% (n = 8). Patients with VTE treated by non-ultrasound-guided venous cannulation (P = 0.02), with residual thrombus (P = 0.006), or with short anticoagulation period (P = 0.026) had high recurrence rates. Thus, preventing repeated venous puncture and appropriately prolonged anticoagulation time can reduce the risk of VTE recurrence.

Progress on asparaginase-associated pancreatitis / 国际儿科学杂志

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia(ALL)is the most common childhood malignancy.As an essential component of multiagent chemotherapy, asparaginase(ASP)has significantly improved the remission rate and event-free survival rate of children with ALL since its application in clinical practice.However, there are many adverse events due to ASP, including asparaginase-associated pancreatitis(AAP). The mechanisms behind and the risk factors predisposing AAP are unknown.This review summarizes the latest research progresses on AAP.

Homoharringtonine is a safe and effective substitute for anthracyclines in children younger than 2 years old with acute myeloid leukemia / 医学前沿

Homoharringtonine (HHT), a plant alkaloid from Cephalotaxus harringtonia, exhibits a unique anticancer mechanism and has been widely used in China to treat patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) since the 1970s. Trial SCMC-AML-2009 presented herein was a randomized clinical study designed based on our previous findings that pediatric AML patients younger than two years old may benefit from HHT-containing chemotherapy regimens. Patients randomized to arm A were treated with a standard chemotherapy regimen comprising mainly of anthracyclines and cytarabine (Ara-C), whereas patients in arm B were treated with HHT-containing regimens in which anthracyclines in all but the initial induction therapy were replaced by HHT. From February 2009 to November 2015, 59 patients less than 2 years old with de novo AML (other than acute promyelocytic leukemia) were recruited. A total of 42 patients achieved a morphologic complete remission (CR) after the first course, with similar rates in both arms (70.6% vs.72.0%). At the end of the follow-up period, 40 patients remained in CR and 5 patients underwent hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in CR, which could not be considered as events but censors. The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) was 60.2%±9.6% for arm A and 88.0%±6.5% for arm B (P= 0.024). Patients in arm B experienced shorter durations of leukopenia, neutropenia, and thrombocytopenia and had a lower risk of infection during consolidation chemotherapy with high-dosage Ara-C. Consequently, the homoharringtonine-based regimen achieved excellent EFS and alleviated hematologic toxicity for children aged younger than 2 years with de novo AML compared with the anthracycline-based regimen.

Multicenter clinical trial of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in elder children and adolescents / 中华血液学杂志

Objective@#To analyze the clinical characteristics and long-term outcomes with multicenter study for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in children over 10 years old and adolescents.@*Method@#Newly diagnosed ALL patients aged from 10 to 18 years old in three hospitals were included in the study from May 1st 2005 to April 30th 2015. They were received ALL-2005/2009 protocol following up to December 31st 2016. The clinical characteristics, outcomes and the prognostic analysis were evaluated between the two protocols.@*Results@#Totally, 237 patients were involved in the study, 76 cases for ALL-2005 and 161 cases for ALL-2009 protocol. Complete remission (CR) after induction therapy was 94.5%. 64 (28.6%) patients relapsed with a median time of 14.5 months and 70 (29.5%) patients passed away during the following time. In long-term follow-up, the 5-year event-free survival (EFS) and 5-year overall survival (OS) of ALL patients were (63.1±3.3)% and (68.4±3.2)%. The 7-year EFS and OS were (61.0±3.5)% and (67.6±3.3)%.The 5-year EFS of intermediate risk group in ALL-2005 and ALL-2009 protocol were (73.6±6.1)% and (71.7±4.3)% with no difference (χ2=0.064, P=0.801). The 5-year EFS of high risk group in two protocols were (27.6±9.6)% and (33.9±9.3)%, showing no significant difference (χ2=0.296, P=0.586). Five years relapsed rate of two protocols were (33.8±5.7)% and (32.6±4.1)% with no difference (χ2=0.055, P=0.815). The mortalities were 36.8% and 29.8% separately (χ2=2.869, P=0.090). Univariate analysis indicated that age, male, risk, BCR/ABL translocation/t(9;22) and resistant to induction were risk prognostic factors in long-term survival (χ2=4.764, 4.796, 46.410, 9.560, 25.450; P=0.029, 0.029, <0.001, 0.049, <0.001). Cox multivariate analysis showed male, risk and resistant to induction were independent risk prognostic factors (RR=1.790, 2.727, 2.719; P=0.021, 0.000, 0.012).@*Conclusion@#Protocol ALL-2009 enhanced the chemotherapy intensity in intermediate risk group with no benefit of survival. BCR-ABL fusion or t(9;22) translocation was still the risk factor of prognosis. TKI inhibitor used in these patients could improve survival. EFS rate was increased a little and death rate was decreased in ALL-2009 protocol with no significant lower relapsed rate comparing with ALL-2005 protocol.

Long-term results of multicenter study based on childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia 2005 protocol / 中华儿科杂志

Objective@#To evaluate the long-term efficacy and prognostic factors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) enrolled in Shanghai Children's Medical Center-Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia-2005(SCMC-ALL-2005) multicenter study.@*Methods@#Between May 2005 and December 2014, 1 497 newly diagnosed ALL patients were enrolled and treated in 5 hospitals of SCMC-ALL-2005 study group, using risk-stratified SCMC-ALL-2005 protocol. Risk group classification and treatment intensity were based on clinical features, genetic abnormalities, early response to treatment and levels of minimal residual disease (MRD). Kaplan-Meier method was used to generate overall survival (OS) and event-free survival(EFS) curves. Cox proportional hazards models were used for multivariate analyses.@*Results@#The patients were followed up to December 31, 2016, the median follow-up time was 69 months (24-141 months). The 5-year and 10-year OS rates were (80.0±1.0)% and (76.0±2.0)%. The 5-year and 10-year EFS rates were (69.0±1.0)% and (66.0±2.0)%. The 5-year and 10-year relapse rates were (23.0±1.0)% and (25.0±2.0)%. The 5-year OS and EFS for low risk (LR), intermediate risk (IR) and high risk (HR) were (91.1±1.4)% and (83.3±1.8)%, (79.2±1.5)% and (68.9±1.7)%, (52.9±4.4)% and (30.0±3.8)%, respectively. MRD negative status (<0.01%) on day 55 was seen in 792 patients (82.8%) and positive MRD on day 55 was associated with poor prognosis (OR=1.9, 95%CI: 1.3-2.7, P=0.001). Twenty-four HR patients received allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and 17(70.8%) of them were alive and in remission. A total of 164 severe adverse events occurred, 46 of them died, treatment-related mortality was 3.1%.@*Conclusions@#In this large sample research, the overall outcome for multi-center SCMC-ALL-2005 study was favorable. This helps to promote the standardized treatment of childhood ALL to the whole country. MRD results on day 55 of induction therapy have important prognostic and therapeutic implications.

Study on clinical prognosis among ETV6/RUNX1 positive childhood B-precursor acute lymphocyte leukemia / 临床儿科杂志

Objective To investigate the incidence of the ETV6/RUNX1 fusion gene among Chinese pediatric patients with B-ALL and its effect on the prognosis. Methods A total of 723 patients with B-ALL from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2014 were enrolled in this study. All patients were detected ETV6/RUNX1 fusion gene by FISH. Clinical data and ETV6/RUNX1 were combined to analyze the clinical prognosis. Results Among the 723 patients, 151 were with ETV6/RUNX1 positive B-ALL, accounting for approximately 20.89%(151/723) of B-precursor cases;91 patients were with recurrence, including 10 patients with ETV6/RUNX1 positive B-ALL, and the recurrence rate of ETV6/RUNX1 positive B-ALL was 10.99%(10/91). Among 10 recurrent patients with ETV6/RUNX1 positive B-ALL, 9 patients relapsed more than 300 days later after diagnosis, while the recurrence times among the patients with ETV6/RUNX1 negative was very different. Although the recurrence times between the two groups showed no signiifcant difference (P?=?0.09), the recurrence times of ETV6/RUNX1 positive patients were mainly found at the end of clinical chemotherapy, while the recurrence time of ETV6/RUNX1 negative patients were mainly at maintaining chemotherapy period, there was a signiifcant difference between the distribution of recurrence time (P?

Recent advance in diagnosis and treatment of pediatric acute myeloid leukemia / 中华实用儿科临床杂志

Pediatric acute myeloid leukemia(AML)is still a fatal disease.Recent evidence based clinical study indicated intensified chemotherapy contribute to improvement of pediatric AML survival,while supporting care was an important measurement to let patients tolerate more and more intensifying chemotherapy.Recent series of clinical trial reveals that benefit from more intensified chemotherapy will be limited.Combined risk stratification of genetics and minimal residual desease monitoring may further increase the survival.Tyrosine kinase inhibitors,Gemtuzumab ozogami-cin and Chimeric antigen receptors modified T cell based targeted therapy could be the only way to cure resistant AML. In this review,advance in conventional chemotherapy,hematopoietic stem cell transplantation,and targeted therapy for pediatric AML were reviewed.

The characteristics and clinical signiifcance ofNOTCH1 mutations in childhood T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia / 临床儿科杂志

ObjectiveTo clarify the characteristics and clinical signiifcance of the NOTCH1 mutations in childhood T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL).MethodsAmplify and sequence the heterodimerization (HD) domain and the pro-line-glutamicacid-serine-threonine (PEST) domain of theNOTCH1 gene in 28 T-ALL children, in order to explore the frequency, position and type of the mutations as well as their reletions with prognosis.ResultsIn 28 children with T-ALL, 15 cases (51.57%) had been identiifed theNOTCH1 mutations, all of which were heterozygous mutations. The lymphoblast counts in peripher-al blood and bone marrow in theNOTCH1 mutant group at admission were signiifcantly higher than in the non-mutant group (P<0.05). The 1-year remission rate in the 28 children with T-ALL was 75% (21/28), including 80% (12/15) in mutant group in which 3 patients relapsed and all of them died (1-year mortality 20%) and 69.20% (9/13) in non-mutant group in which 4 patients relapsed but all survived (1-year mortality 0%).ConclusionsThe children with T-ALL had a high incidence of NOTCH1 mu-tations at various sites. In addition, the patients withNOTCH1 mutations had more severe disease at diagnosis, better short-term prognosis and poor outcome with salvage therapy after relapse.

Long-term follow-up of stage 1-2 neuroblastoma / 临床儿科杂志

Objectives To evaluate the clinical features, treatment scheme and long-term outcomes of stage 1、2 childhood neuroblastoma (NB). Methods The retrospective study included 49 newly diagnosed NB stage 1、2 patients from June 1998 to December 2010. Clinical data and long-term outcomes were analyzed. Results Twenty-four patients with stage 1 NB and twenty patients with stage 2 NB were found among all 237 patients with NB enrolled in this study. The median age at diagnosis was 25 months( 2 week to 9 year old),29 males and 20 females. Thirty-one patients (63.6%) without symptoms were discovered with tumor by physical or imaging examination. Thorax and abdomen were the most common sites of primary tumor (21 and 22 cases, accounting for 42.9% and 44.9% of all patients, respectively). Forty (81.6%) NB patients had favorable pathology classification. One patient was of MYCN amplification status. Urine vanilla mandelic acid was normal in 32 (91.4%) patients, and serum lactate dehydrogenase was less than five times of the normal value in all patients. Ten NB patients were treated ac-cording to the low-risk protocol who received surgery alone.Thirty-nine patients were treated according to intermediate-risk protocol who received both surgery and chemotherapy. All the patients achieved very good partial remission (100%).The medi-an follow-up period was 60 months(22 months to148months). Nine patients were lost after a follow up of 3 months in medi-an. The 2-、3-、5-year event free survival and overall survial of all 49 patients was 100%. Conclusions The prognosis for neu-roblastoma of stage 1、2 in this study was with 100%survival, which provides opportunity for further reduction of dosage and/or duration of episodes in chemotherapy.

Outcome of children with low- or intermediate-risk neuroblastoma：a report of 70 cases / 临床儿科杂志

Objectives To evaluate the long-term outcomes of childhood low-or intermediate-risk neuroblastoma (NB) and their relevant prognostic factors. Methods A total of 70 new cases of low-or intermediate-risk NB diagnosed and treated by NB-99 protocol between 1999 and 2008 were analyzed retrospectively. Results Of these 70 NB patients, fourteen patients were in low-risk group and 56 were in intermediate-risk group. Sixty-seven patients reached complete remission (CR) or very good partial remission and 3 (5%) achieved partial remission. Ten patients relapsed. One patient occured second malignant neo-plasm. No patients died of chemotherapy-related adverse events or infections. The 5 year overall survival rate was 85.9%, event-free survival rate was 81.0%. Bone marrow infiltration, age at diagnosis, stage, lactate dehydrogenase level had a significant effect on prognosis. Conclusion Develop cytogenetic and molecular biology tests and pretreatment risk stratification are im-portant for further improvement of treatment protocol.

Correlation of the single nucleotide polymorphisms of IL-15 with chemotheray response in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia / 临床儿科杂志

Objectives To investigate the correlation between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in interleu-kin-15 (IL-15) and treatment response in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Methods Genomic DNA samples extracted from remission bone marrow cells of ALL patients were genotyped by MassArray. Five SNPs (rs10519612, rs10519613, rs17007695, rs17015014 and rs35964658) in IL-15 and their association to minimal residual disease (MRD) status in the end of induction therapy were studied. Results SNP rs17007695 was associated with the early response in children with ALL(P=0.049) and the incidence of positive MRD after induction therapy in CC genotype carriers was 1.8 times more than that in TT genotype carriers. Haplotype analysis of these five SNPs showed that the frequency of haplotype CACGG in MRD positive group was 2.1 times higher than that in MRD negative group (P=0.035). Conclusions IL-15 gene polymorphism was associated with the early treatment response in Han Chinese children with acute lymphoblastic leuke-mia.

Asparagine synthetase is partially localized to the plasma membrane and upregulated by L-asparaginase in U937 cells / 华中科技大学学报（医学）（英德文版）

This study investigated the intracellular localization of asparagine synthetase (ASNS) in the relation with chemoresistance in leukemia. pIRES-GFP-ASNS-Flag/Neo expression vector was transiently tansfected into SK-N-MC cells and 297T cells respectively. Immunofluorescence and Western blot analysis were performed for cellular localization of ASNS respectively. U937 cells were treated with L-asparaginase for 48 h and examined for endogenous ASNS expression on plasma membrane by immunofluorescence staining. Immunofluorescence staining showed that the transiently expressed ASNS was partly localized on transfected-SK-N-MC cell surface. Moreover, Western blotting exhibited that ASNS expressed both in cytosol and on plasma membrane of transfected-293T cells. Immunofluorescence staining with anti-ASNS-specific monoclonal antibody revealed that endogenous ASNS was localized on the plasma membrane of U937 cells, except for its distribution in the cytosol. In addition, ASNS exhibited a higher expression on plasma membrane after treatment with L-asparaginase as compared with the untreated cells. It was concluded that the subcellular translocation of ASNS may play an important role in L-asparaginase resistance in leukemia cells.

Discrepancy of the Two Clock Drawing Tests in Evaluating Alzheimer’s Disease / 中国临床心理学杂志

Objective: To probe the significance of spontaneous and mimicking clock drawing tests (CDT) to evaluate the severity of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: 30 normal middle aged to senile people as the control, and 20 amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients, 20 mild AD patients, 19 moderate AD patients and 14 severe AD patients were asked to finish the series of neuropsychologic test including the spontaneous and mimicking clock drawing tests. Results: For spontaneous CDT, there was significant difference in the "anchoring part"(draw the four key points-12-3-69 first) between the MCI patients and normal controls (P

A Comparison of Recognizing Mild Cognitive Impairment Between Visual and Auditory Logical Memory / 中国临床心理学杂志

Objective: To compare the role in recognizing mild cognitive impairment of visual logical memory to auditory logical memory. Methods: 41 normal aged controls and 41 patients with mild cognitive impairment(MCI) were required to finish immediate recall and delay recall by visual and auditory logical memory test. Results: There was significant difference in immediate recall and delay recall between the two groups who received visual and auditory logical memory test, and the LM of visual logical memory test was superior to that of auditory one. Auditory logical memory-II could recognize more MCI individuals than visual logical memory-II. The accuracy of recognizing MCI by visual logical memory test was 88% when we set the standard score at 5 points, and 93% for auditory logical memory test with the standard score at 3 points. Conclusion: Delay recall of auditory logical memory test is the most sensitive one among all the logical memory tests for recognizing MCI.