Myelocytic Leukemia-Like Syndrome, Familial, Chronic

Lardi et al. (1994) described 3 Saudi sibs, 2 girls and a boy, with clinical features of chronic myelocytic leukemia in early infancy. Their parents were first cousins. Peripheral blood counts of the parents and available relatives were normal and there was no family history of leukemia. A familial form of CML (608232) that closely resembles the juvenile type, which lacks the Philadelphia chromosome, had previously been reported in at least 3 family sets (Anderson, 1951; Holton and Johnson, 1968). The Philadelphia chromosome was absent in all 3 children reported by Lardi et al. (1994). The short survival of the first 2 children (18 and 2 months, respectively) favored a diagnosis of leukemia rather than leukemoid reaction. The possibility of viral or other infection being responsible for familial clustering was mentioned.