The achievement of molecular complete remission during treatment with imatinib mesylate correlates with relapse-free survival in bcr/abl-positive acute lymphoid leukemia patients

Abstract

Using quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction we investigated the significance of achieving molecular complete remission (CR) in 12 patients with bcr/abl-positive acute lymphocytic leukemia treated with imatinib. The 6 patients who achieved molecular CR had significantly better relapse-free survival (RFS) than the others (9 vs 4 months) (p=0.000). Moreover, the 6 patients with a bcr-abl/GAPDHx100,000 ratio <2 after 4 weeks of treatment had significantly better RFS (10.5 vs 4 months) (p=0.004).