Peripheral progenitor cells (CFU-GM, BFU-E, CD34) are increased in untreated chronic lymphocyte leukemia patients: stage B and C display a particularly high CD34+ cell count.

No treatment has proved its efficiency in CLL. Autologous transplantation is now under consideration for the youngest patients. We assayed progenitor cells (CFU-GM, BFU-E, CD34) in the peripheral blood of 28 untreated CLL patients and found an increase of all these progenitors in CLL compared to controls. There was no statistical difference between stage A versus stages B and C for CFU-GM and BFU-E. In contrast, CD34 cells were higher in stages B and C as compared to stage A. This finding could be explained by a high number of circulating clonal cells in advanced stages of the disease.

[Diagnosis of iron deficiency: evaluation of the "soluble transferrin receptor/transferrin" ratio]. / Diagnostic de la carence en fer: évaluation du rapport "récepteur soluble de la transferrine/ferritine".

OBJECTIVE: This study was aimed at determining the diagnostic value of conventional laboratory tests regarding the iron status and serum transferrin receptor in hospitalized patients. METHODS: Patients who had to undergo bone marrow aspirate examination were included in this 8-month prospective study. Iron deficiency was defined as the absence of stainable iron on bone marrow examination. Patients with stainable iron were included in the control group. The higher value of diagnostic efficacy determined the cut-off value for each parameter of the iron status. RESULTS: Twenty-one patients (17 females, four males) (mean age: 52 years) with iron deficiency and 33 control subjects (20 females, 13 males) (mean age: 60 years) were included in the study. The ratio serum transferrin receptor/serum ferritin had the best diagnostic efficiency (78%) with a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 97%. Serum ferritin alone with a cut-off value of 60 micrograms/L had the same specificity (97%) but a lower sensitivity (76%). The diagnostic value of all other analyzed tests was below 66% (transferrin alone, mean corpuscular volume, transferrin saturation, iron, serum transferrin receptor alone, red cell distribution width). CONCLUSION: Among in-patients, ferritin remains the first intention test to diagnose iron deficiency, but the cut-off value should be increased (60 micrograms/L in this study). The ratio "serum transferrin receptor to serum ferritin" provides the highest specificity with a higher cost and should be used only in doubtful cases.

[Megakaryoblastic acute leukemia: bone and joint manifestations in a 7-month-old child]. / Présentation ostéo-articulaire d'une leucémie aiguë mégacaryoblastique chez une enfant de 7 mois.

Acute megakaryoblastic leukemia accounts for approximately 3-10% of acute myeloid leukemia in children. Its diagnosis may be difficult because of associated myelofibrosis. We report the case of a 7-month-old child who presented hepatomegaly with bicytopenia. She also developed bone and joint pain with recurrent aseptic arthritis. We suggested the diagnosis of megakaryoblastic leukemia early but multiple bone marrow investigations had been processed without positive results because of sampling problems and lack of abnormal cells in the morphological, phenotypic, and cytogenetic examinations. We had a variety of indirect evidence for our assumption: the x-ray showing periosteal new bone, lytic lesions and metaphyseal bands, bone marrow aspirate smears with micromegakaryocytes, and bone marrow biopsy suggesting myelofibrosis. This was very suggestive of leukemia but we could not prove it and we finally found megakaryoblasts on bone marrow aspirate smears after more than 2 months of investigation and initiated a course of corticosteroids.

Ex vivo expansion of CD34+/CD41+ late progenitors from enriched peripheral blood CD34+ cells.

In our experience, patients with neuroblastoma who undergo transplantation with CD34+ cells following high-dose chemotherapy have prolonged delays in platelet recovery. In vitro expansion of megakaryocyte (MK) cells may provide a complementary transplant product able to enhance platelet production in the recipient. We investigated the ability of a combination of various hematopoietic growth factors to generate ex vivo MK progenitors. Immunoselected CD34+ cells from peripheral blood stems cells (PBSCs) were cultured in media with or without serum, supplemented by IL-3, IL-6, IL-11, SCF, TPO, Flt-3 ligand, and MIP-1alpha. In terms of MK phenotypes, we observed a maximal expansion of CD61+, CD41+, and CD42a of 69-, 60-, and 69-fold, respectively, i.e., 8-10 times greater than the expansion of total cell numbers. Whereas the absolute increment of CD34+ cells was slightly elevated (fourfold) we showed increases of 163-, 212-, and 128-fold for CD34+/CD61+, CD34+/CD41+, and CD34+/CD42a+ cells, respectively. We obtained only a modest expansion of CFU-MKs after only 4 days of culture (fourfold) and similar levels of CFU-MKs were observed after 7 days (fivefold). Morphology and immunohistochemistry CD41+ analyses confirmed expansion of a majority of CD41+ immature cells on days 4 and 7, while on day 10 mature cells began to appear. These results show that primarily MK progenitors are expanded after 4 days of culture, whereas MK precursor expansion occurs after 7 days. When we compared the two culture media (with and without serum) we observed that increases of all specific phenotypes of the MK lineage were more elevated in serum-free culture than in medium with serum. This difference was especially marked for CD34+/CD61+ and CD34+/CD41+ (163 vs 42 and 212 vs 36, respectively). We contaminated CD34+ cells with a neuroblastoma cell line and we observed no expansion of malignant cells in our culture conditions (RT-PCR for tyrosine hydroxylase positive at day 4 and negative at day 7). With our combination of hematopoietic growth factors we are able to sufficiently expand ex vivo MK late progenitor cells to be used as complementary transplant products in neuroblastoma patients who undergo transplantation with CD34+ cells. It is possible that these committed MK late progenitors could accelerate short-term platelet recovery in the recipient until more primitive progenitor cells have had time to engraft.