[Marked improvement of anemia during treatment with deferasirox in patients with primary myelofibrosis and acute myeloid leukemia with myelodysplasia-related changes].

ABSTRACT

We report two patients who achieved a marked improvement of hematopoiesis with the use of deferasirox (DSX) for transfusional iron overload. Case 1 is an 81-year-old male who was diagnosed with primary myelofibrosis in July, 2007. He required regular red blood cell (RBC) transfusion of 4 units/month when he was started on DSX treatment in June, 2009. Four months after the treatment, he became transfusion independent, and has maintained hemoglobin levels of around 13 g/dl until today. Case 2 is a 70-year-old female with acute myeloid leukemia with myelodysplasia-related changes. She had been on RBC transfusion of 4 units/month when she was started on DSX treatment in January, 2010. Two months after the treatment, she became transfusion-independent, and 5 months after treatment, blast cells completely disappeared in the peripheral blood, together with normalization of white blood cell and neutrophil counts. Achieving durable transfusion-independency and normalization of white blood cell count and differential with a single use of DSX is a very rare event. Prospective accumulation of more patients and research to understand the mechanism underlying these effects are clearly warranted.