Treatment of childhood acute myelogenous leukemia with allogeneic and autologous stem cell transplantation during the first remission: a report from the Kyushu-Yamaguchi Children's Cancer Study group in Japan.

A total of 64 newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia patients (except FAB M3 and/or Down syndrome) under 18 years of age were consecutively enrolled into the study. Patients having an HLA-identical sibling (allo group) were assigned to undergo allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (allo BMT) in the first complete remission (CR). Others (non-allo group) were assigned to undergo autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) or autologous BMT (auto BMT). Conditioning regimen was busulfan + melphalan for all transplantation. Of 64 patients (allo group 24; non-allo group 40), 59 (92.2%) achieved a CR. Eighteen relapses occurred (allo group 4; non-allo group 14) and 6 died during the first CR. The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) rate was 53.3 +/- 6.4% at a median follow-up period of 45 months. The 5-year EFS rates of allo and non-allo groups were 70.8 +/- 9.3% and 43.0 +/- 8.1%, respectively (p = .08). The EFS rates at 5 years post-transplant for allo BMT from an HLA-identical sibling (n = 18), PBSCT (11), and auto BMT (6) were 88.1 +/- 7.9%, 41.6 +/- 19.7%, and 83.3 +/- 15.2%, respectively. The outcome of allo BMT was superior to that of autograft. Auto BMT rather than PBSCT might contribute to a long-term survival in case of no available HLA-identical siblings.