Haematologica (Feb 2008)

Cup-like acute myeloid leukemia: new disease or artificial phenomenon?

  • Frank P. Kroschinsky,
  • Ulrike Schäkel,
  • Rainer Fischer,
  • Brigitte Mohr,
  • Uta Oelschlaegel,
  • Roland Repp,
  • Markus Schaich,
  • Silke Soucek,
  • Gustavo Baretton,
  • Gerhard Ehninger,
  • Christian Thiede

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3324/haematol.11669
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 93, no. 2

Abstract

Read online

We investigated cup-like nuclear morphology of acute myeloid leukemia blasts in 266 randomly selected patients and its association with hematologic findings, disease markers and outcome data. Cup-like acute myeloid leukemia was diagnosed in 55 patients (21%). It was associated with female sex, high white blood cell and blast cell counts, normal karyotype, and low CD34 and HLA-DR expression. Mutations of FLT3, NPM1 or both were detected in 84.9% compared with 58.1% in cases without this morphology (p=0.001). There was no influence on response to treatment or survival. Therefore, cup-like nuclear morphology is an indicator of normal karyotype and should guide more specific molecular analyses.