Bone Marrow Transplantation in Patients With Acute Leukemia In Cuba: Results From the Last 30 Years and New Opportunities Through International Collaboration.

Blood and marrow transplantation (BMT) has been performed in Cuba for over 30 years with limited resources and without international relationships. Researchers from University of Illinois at Chicago and Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital (HAH) in Havana collaborated on retrospectively analyzing 101 consecutive patients with adult acute leukemia who received BMT at HAH from June 1986 to January 2016. Of these, 82 had acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and 19 had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

[Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I infection in patients with lymphoproliferative disorders at two sentinel sites in Cuba].

Objective: To determine the prevalence of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) infection among patients with lymphoproliferative disorders, as well as among their family members and sexual contacts, at two sentinel sites in Cuba.

Methods: An analysis was conducted of all the patients with a presumptive diagnosis of hematological malignancies seen by the hematology departments of the Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras (HHA), City of Havana, and the Hospital Provincial Comandante Faustino Pérez (HPCFP), Matanza, Cuba, in January 1996-January 1997. HTLV-I seropositivity was determined by ELISA and Western Blot, and infection was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction.