A Jehovah’s Witness with Acute Myeloid Leukemia Successfully Treated with an Epigenetic Drug, Azacitidine: A Clue for Development of Anti-AML Therapy Requiring Minimum Blood Transfusions

Table 1

Azacitidine therapy for AML in the literature.

Number of CR/number of all cases (CR rate)		Predictor for response^a	Time to response^a	Transfusions given during induction therapy period	Reference number
Newly diagnosed AML	Relapsed or refractory AML
4/20 (20%)	—	Normal cytogenetics	Median 3 months (range 2–5 months)	No data	[6]
8/78 (10%)		No data	No data	No data	[7]
10/55 (18%)^b	—	No data	No data	No data	[8]
2/20 (10%)^c	0/20 (0%)	Lower BM blast percentages before therapy and day 15 of the therapy	Median 2.5 months (range 1–7 months)	No data	[9]
32/114 (28%)^d	—	No data	No data	No data	[10]
8/35 (23%)	4/47 (8%)	Leukocyte count < 10 × 10^9/L, newly diagnosed AML	No data	No data	[11]
9/26 (35%)	—	No data	Median 4 months (range 3–7 months)	RBC 2.7 times/month and platelets 0.3 times/month during the first 3 months^e	[5]
15/155 (10%)		No data	Median 4 months	No data	[12]
13/55 (24%)	—	No data	Median 4 months (range 1–10 months)	No data	[13]
6/34 (18%)^f	0/28 (0%)^f	Newly diagnosed AML	Median 3.5 cycles of therapy	No data	[14]

^aResponse includes CR, partial remission, and hematological improvement defined in the previous report [6].
^bPatients were AML with low bone marrow blast counts (blasts 20%–34%).
^cEight de novo AML and 12 AML transformed from MDS.
^dPatients were treated with either azacitidine or decitabine and with or without histone deacetylase inhibitor.
^eTransfusion requirement during the first course of induction chemotherapy was significantly less in patients treated with azacitidine compared with patients treated with conventional anti-AML chemotherapy (RBC transfusions: median 2.7 versus 7 times per month; platelet transfusions: median 0.3 versus 5 times per month).
^fPatients were treated with either azacitidine or decitabine.