This study suggests that CECs reflect the abnormal angiogenesis found in MDS, especially in the early stages of

the disease. The increased number of functional endothelial progenitor cells in MDS strengthens the rationale for therapeutic interventions aimed at restoring a normal interaction between hematopoietic progenitors and marrow microenvironment.”
“Current Cisplatin mouse prognostic models for myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) do not allow the identification of patients with lower risk disease and poor prognosis that may benefit from early therapeutic intervention. We evaluated the characteristics of 856 patients with low or intermediate-1 disease by the International Prognostic Scoring System. Mean follow-up

was 19.6 months (range 1-262). Of these patients, 87 (10%) transformed to acute myelogenous leukemia, and 429 (50%) had died. By multivariate analysis, H 89 concentration characteristics associated with worse survival (P < 0.01) were low platelets, anemia, older age, higher percent of marrow blasts and poor-risk cytogenetics. Although not included in the model, higher ferritin (P = 0.007) and beta 2-microglobulin (P < 0.001) levels were associated with worse prognosis. This allowed the development of a scoring system in which patients could be grouped in three categories: category 1 (n = 182, 21%) with a median survival of 80.3 months (95% CI 68-NA); category 2 (n = 408, 48%) with a median survival of 26.6 months (95% CI 22-32) and category 3 (n = 265, 31%) with a median survival of 14.2 months (95% CI 13-18). In summary, this analysis indicates that it is possible to identify patients with lower risk MDS and poor prognosis who may benefit from early intervention.”
“The differences in clinical features and prognosis between hypoplastic myelodysplastic syndrome (h-MDS) and normo-/ hypercellular MDS (NH-MDS) remain unsettled. In this study, the characteristics of 37 h-MDS patients and 152 NH-MDS patients were compared. Peripheral-blood white blood

cell counts selleck chemical and bone marrow blast percentage were lower in h-MDS patients than in NH-MDS patients (P = 0.012 and 0.016, respectively). Refractory anemia (RA) was predominant (56.8%) in h-MDS, whereas RA with excess of blast (RAEB) was most common (44.7%) in NH-MDS. Chromosomal abnormalities -7/7q- occurred less frequently in h-MDS patients than in NH-MDS patients (0 vs 18.3%, P = 0.022). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of mutations of RAS, AML1, JAK2, PTPN11, FLT3/ITD, and hypermethylation of SOCS1 and SHP1 between these two groups. International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) was ideal for predicting prognoses in h-MDS patients (P = 0.002). In low- or intermediate-1 (Int-1)-risk MDS patients, h-MDS patients had a superior survival than NH-MDS patients (P = 0.01).