Transformation of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) to acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is a clonal haematopoietic stem cell disorder characterised by ineffective haematopoiesis. Patients with MDS have a probability of transforming to Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). To better understand the transformation of MDS to AML in Singapore, a retrospective multivariate analysis was done on data of 215 MDS patients data obtained from the Cytogenetics Lab at Singapore General Hospital. Out of 215 MDS patients, 24 transformed to AML (11.2%), whose median age was 64 years old, slightly younger than the median age across the whole sample pool (68 for females and 70 for males). The gender ratio of male is to female MDS patients with/without AML transformation were 2:1 and 1.19:1, respectively. Cytogenetically 95 abnormal karyotypes were found out of the 213 evaluable karyotypes. The presence of pancytopenia, thrombocytopenia and older age (>60 years) were found to be statistically significant (p