THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH JOURNAL, cilt.9, ss.375-383, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)
Objectives: Our aim in this study is to investigate the effect of fibrosis at diagnosis on treatment and survival
in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
Methods: This study is retrospective. We evaluated the relationship between patients' age, white blood cell
count at diagnosis, morphological blast percentage and flow cytometric blast percentage at diagnosis, day 15th
and day 33th, absolute blast count in peripheral smear on day 8th, and the degree of fibrosis in bone marrow
biopsy at diagnosis in 36 pediatric patients. The fibrosis degree in biopsy on the thirty-third day after induction
therapy was measured.
Results: Twenty-eight (77.8%) cases were diagnosed B-ALL and 8 T-ALL (22.2%). There was no statistically
significant difference between the groups with and without fibrosis in terms of any parameter measured at the
time of diagnosis, 8th day, 15th day, and 33th day. No significant difference was found between the groups
according to overall survival (OS): the mean OS was 50.22 ± 5.44 months in the fibrosis group and 49.70 ±
3.96 months in the non-fibrosis group (p = 0.557).
Conclusions: There is a high detection rate of bone marrow fibrosis in ALL pediatric cases at the time of
diagnosis. Nevertheless, fibrosis does not affect survival.
Keywords: Leukemia, fibrosis, bone marrow, childhood, lymphoblastic, microenvironment