© 1999 Atlas of Genetics and Cytogenetics in Oncology and Haematology Identity

Note: Infant or congenital leukaemias are defined by a diagnosis within either the first month, the first year, or the first two years of life, according to different workers; recent data have shown that patients, diagnosed to have a leukaemia at age 5 mths and 2 years, already had a MLL-AF4 fusion gene in their neonatal blood spots/Guthrie cards. Infant leukaemias have been suspected to have an environmental component: 1- some of the leukaemias known to be often related to genotoxic exposure, such as the 11q23 leukaemias and the t(8;16) leukaemia, may also be found in infants; 2- there has been a significant increase in infant acute leukaemias incidence of around 2.5 % per year for 15 years, suggesting the presence of an environmenta