Acute myeloid leukemia

Acute leukemia is a worldwide disease with an incidence of approximately 4/100 000 per year; 70% of the cases are acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The salient pathologic feature of AML is the excessive accumulation of immature myeloid blasts in the bone marrow (BM). This maturation arrest, a characteristic of acute leukemias, prevents normal hematopoiesis and leads, directly or indirectly, to a lack of differentiated granulocytes, monocytes, thrombocytes, and erythrocytes. Chromosome banding analyses reveal acquired, clonal chromosomal abnormalities in the majority of AML cases, with the frequencies and types of aberrations to some extent being influenced by factors such as age, previous treatment/genotoxic exposure, gender, geographic/ethnic origin, and constitutional genetics. This chapter summarizes the cytogenetic, molecular genetic and clinical features of AML-associated numerical and structural abnormalities. It explains the characteristic karyotypic patterns in AML. Complex Karyotypic (CK), monosomal Karyotype (MK), normal Karyotype (NK) are the chromosomal abnormalities reported in AML.