12th Congress of the European Hematology ... - Haematologica

tem (IPSS) to h-MDS was also investigated. Methods. We retrospectively
reviewed medical records of 227 primary MDS patients diagnosed
according to the criteria of French-American-British (FAB) classification
at National Taiwan University Hospital. Secondary MDS due to
antecedent hematological diseases or drugs was excluded. Every patient
received bone marrow (BM) aspiration and trephine biopsy simultaneously.
All patients were categorized by FAB classification and IPSS. MDS
patients with BM cellularity less than 30% were considered as having
h-MDS. Metaphase G-banding technique was utilized for chromosome
study. Mutations of RAS, AML1, JAK2, PTPN11, KIT and FLT3 internal
tandem duplication were analyzed by PCR with pertinent primers followed
by direct sequencing. Hypermethylation of SOCS1 and SHP1 was
detected by methylation-specific PCR. Demographics, complete blood
counts, cytogenetics, genetic and epigenetic markers were all compared
by Mann-Whitney U test or Pearson chi-sqaure test. Acute leukemic
transformation rate and survival analysis were performed with Kaplan-
Meier analysis. Results. Among the 37 patients (16.3%) diagnosed as
having h-MDS, male-to-female ratio was 3.6 to 1. Mean white blood cell
count, absolute neutrophil count and platelet count were significantly
lower in h-MDS than in NH-MDS (p