Late Relapse of Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia: Literature Review and Results of Seven Years of Clinical and Laboratory Follow-Up of a Korean Patient

Abstract

Among patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), 10% to 30% experience relapse. Most relapses occur within 2 years; only a few, known as late relapses, occur 4 years after achievement of the first complete remission (CR). We present a rare case of an ethnic Asian patient with APL who experienced late relapse, which has been continuously monitored by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for long-term molecular remission. Recently, the European APL Group published 2 large-scale studies related to laterelapse APL; however, only 2 Asian cases of late-relapse APL had previously been documented in the literature. We consider this case to be the first report of a patient with late-relapse APL in South Korea and believe that future studies of late-relapse APL for Asian and other ethnic groups are necessary.