CASE REPORT

Therapy-related, mixed-lineage leukaemia translocation-positive, monoblastic myeloid sarcoma of the uterus

Vinod Pullarkat¹, Leslie Veliz², Karen Chang³, Ann Mohrbacher⁴, Anna Lizza Teotico¹, Stephen J Forman¹ and Marilyn L Slovak²

¹ Division of Haematology and Haematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, California, USA
² Department of Cytogenetics, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Duarte, California, USA
³ Division of Pathology, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Duarte, California, USA
⁴ Division of Haematology, Department of Medicine, University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr V Pullarkat
Division of Haematology, City of Hope National Medical Center, 1500 East Duarte Road, Duarte, CA 91010, USA; vpullarkat{at}coh.org

Myeloid sarcomas are tumour masses of myeloid leukaemic cells at extramedullary sites. These tumours can, on occasion, occur without concurrent or antecedent leukaemia. Myeloid sarcomas have been described at unusual locations including the female genital tract. An unusual case of therapy-related acute myeloid leukaemia (t-AML) presenting as isolated monoblastic myeloid sarcoma of the uterus in a patient who had received adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer is presented. Fluorescence in situ hybridisation analysis performed on paraffin-wax-embedded tumour tissue revealed a mixed-lineage leukaemia (MLL) gene rearrangement, supporting the association of this malignancy with prior chemotherapy. This case illustrates that t-AML can rarely present as isolated extramedullary tumours, and the detection of specific chromosomal abnormalities in these myeloid sarcomas can be useful for risk assessment and guiding definitive therapy.

Abbreviations: AML, acute myeloid leukaemia; FISH, fluorescence in situ hybridisation; MLL, mixed lineage leukaemia; RT, room temperature; t-AML, therapy-related acute myeloid leukaemia

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Pullarkat, V., Slovak, M. L., Dagis, A., Bedell, V., Somlo, G., Nakamura, R., Stein, A. S., O'Donnell, M. R., Nademanee, A., Teotico, A. L., Bhatia, S., Forman, S. J. (2009). Acute leukemia and myelodysplasia after adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer: durable remissions after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Ann Oncol 0: mdp232v1-mdp232 [Abstract] [Full Text]