Pregnancy associated acute leukemia: Single center experience

Introduction: Data regarding clinical characteristics, therapy, maternal and fetal outcomes of pregnancy-associated acute leukemia are limited.

Patients and methods: We herein, present the data of 27 pregnancy associated acute leukemia [18 acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and 9 acute lymphatic leukemia (ALL)]. Their data were compared to an age matched group of 75 non-pregnant acute leukemia patients admitted and treated during the same period [53 AML and 22 ALL].

Results: Complete remission rates, induction failure and induction deaths showed insignificant differences in pregnant versus non pregnant patients in both types of acute leukemia. Similarly, OS and DFS showed no significant difference between pregnant versus non pregnant patients in both types of acute leukemia. Cox regression analysis was conducted for prediction of OS and DFS in all the studied patients applying age, WBCs, BM blasts, LDH, cytogenetic abnormalities and pregnancy as covariates, Pregnancy was not considered as a risk factor for OS or PFS in univariate or multivariate analysis.

Conclusion: Our report to the best of our knowledge is the first to present direct evidence that pregnancy has no significant impact on outcome of acute leukemia compared to non-pregnant patients. These results are limited by the small number of cases and should be confirmed in a prospectively larger cohort of patients.