Blast crisis in chronic myeloid leukemia in a 22-month-old child: Is this the youngest child with chronic myeloid leukaemia from India?

Abstract

Pediatric chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is rare and has a worse prognosis compared to adult CML. Median age of diagnosis in pediatric age group is 14 years with most cases occurring in children above 12 years of age in India. We report a case of a 22-month-old female child who presented with fever and reduced appetite of 15-day duration and was diagnosed as a case of CML. The patient was started on imatinib. However, she presented with blast crisis at 8 months of initiation of therapy. She was started on second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors with normalization of blood counts within 3 weeks of initiation of therapy. An exhaustive literature search has shown that this is the youngest patient to present with CML.

Keywords

• bcr/abl1
• blast crisis
• dasatinib
• imatinib
• paediatric chronic myeloid leukaemia