ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION Mortality in Overweight and Underweight Children With Acute Myeloid Leukemia

EACH YEAR IN THEUNITED STATES,500 to 600 individuals youngerthan 21 years develop acutemy-eloid leukemia (AML).1 Cur-rent treatment for AML typically con-sists of 3 or 4 courses of intensive, myelosuppressive chemotherapy with or without bone marrow transplanta-tion from a histocompatible family do-nor. This therapy cures about half the children with AML; of the other half, most succumb to AML-related causes, but 5 % to 15 % die from toxic effects of treatment.2-4 Factors that predict treat-ment failure and death in AML are rela-tively older age and higher white blood cell (WBC) count at diagnosis, a slow response to the first course of chemo