[The prospects for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia of being cured has increased in the Czech Republic in the 21st century to 90% - outcome of the ALL-IC BFM 2002 trial].

Background: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most frequent childhood malignancy. Treatment has been unified in the middle of 1980 in the Czech Republic. In 2002-2007 children and adolescents with acute lymphoblastic leukemia were treated in an international randomized trial ALL-IC BFM 2002 in the Czech Republic.

Combination of prednisolone and low dosed dexamethasone exhibits greater in vitro antileukemic activity than equiactive dose of prednisolone and overcomes prednisolone drug resistance in acute childhood lymphoblastic leukemia.

Introduction: Glucocorticoids, particularly prednisone/ prednisolone and dexamethasone, play a prominent role in the treatment of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia due to their ability to induce apoptosis in susceptible cells. Current therapeutic protocols use prednisone for both the prophase and the induction phase of the therapy because the greater antileukemic activity of dexamethasone is compromised by its high frequency of serious adverse reactions.

Aim: To compare, for the first time, the in vitro antileukemic activity of prednisolone alone to that of a combination of prednisolone and dexamethasone using dexamethasone at a very low and presumably safe dosage (1/50 w/w).

Venous thromboembolism in adolescents.

The incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) during childhood is low with two peaks - neonatal and adolescent age. This retrospective study is focused on clinical characteristics ofVTE during adolescence. The main goals are to assess the most frequent inherited and acquired risk factors and to evaluate the benefit of D-dimers in diagnostics of venous thromboemblism.

The Czech National Diamond-Blackfan Anemia Registry: clinical data and ribosomal protein mutations update.

Diamond-Blackfan anemia is a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome diagnosed in early infancy that is characterized by a (a) macrocytic anemia with no other significant cytopenia, (b) reticulocytopenia, and (c) normal bone marrow cellularity with a paucity of erythroid precursors. Physical anomalies are often present. Mutations in several ribosomal proteins have been associated with the disease.

Minimal residual disease in peripheral blood at day 15 identifies a subgroup of childhood B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia with superior prognosis.

Background: Most minimal residual disease-directed treatment interventions in current treatment protocols for acute lymphoblastic leukemia are based on bone marrow testing, which is a consequence of previous studies showing the superiority of bone marrow over peripheral blood as an investigational material. Those studies typically did not explore the prognostic impact of peripheral blood involvement and lacked samples from very early time points of induction.

Design And Methods: In this study, we employed real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis to examine minimal residual disease in 398 pairs of blood and bone marrow follow-up samples taken from 95 children with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated with the ALL IC-BFM 2002 protocol.

High-dose methotrexate in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia: 7-hydroxymethotrexate systemic exposure and urinary concentrations at the steady state correlate well with those of methotrexate.

The present study evaluated the pharmacokinetics of methotrexate (MTX, CAS 59-05-2) and 7-hydroxymethotrexate (7-OHMTX, CAS 5939-37-7) in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with particular interest devoted to the renal excretion at the steady-state and to the relationships between total (CL) and renal clearances (CL(R)) of both compounds. Ten children (seven girls) aged 8.5 years (2.