SPONTANEOUS REMISSION IN ACUTE LEUKEMIA

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Wide interest has been aroused by a recent report that temporary remissions of acute leukemia have been produced in children with the aid of a so-called folic acid antagonist. Despite its toxicity, Farber, Diamond, Mercer, Sylvester and Wolff1have found that the administration of aminopterin® (4-aminopteroyl glutamic acid) produces, in the majority of patients treated, dramatic clinical improvement together with striking alteration toward normal of peripheral blood and bone marrow pictures. Comparable remissions of appreciable duration have never before been produced by numerous therapeutic agents. On the other hand, sporadically, remissions of acute leukemia have been observed to occur without apparent relationship to therapy. Authenticated instances of spontaneous remission now seem worthy of review because they constitute a control group which may be compared with examples of drug-induced remission. Ten such cases have been described since 1931, and an additional example of unusually long remission (twenty-one months) is herein

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: