Photo Credit: Nemes Laszlo

A recent study showed improvements for 5-year overall survival (OS) patients with acquired aplastic anemia (AA) or paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) that experienced clonal evolution into secondary myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to results published in Blood. Antonio Risitano, MD, PhD, and colleagues assessed patients with AA (n=250) or PNH (n=28) diagnosed after 2010 who later experienced a clonal evolution into AML, MDS, or isolated cytogenetic abnormality insufficient for MDS diagnosis and then underwent allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The researchers noted that 5-year OS was 65% for the entire cohort. A subgroup analysis did not find a significant 5-year OS difference between groups. “We found a 5-year OS higher than 60% for MDS/AML compared [with] 45% in the previously published EBMT (European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation) study and did not find a survival difference between AML and MDS,” Dr. Risitano and colleagues wrote, noting that this study had the largest cohort of patients with secondary MDS/AML after AA/PNH.