Use of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor before, during, and after fludarabine plus cytarabine induction therapy of newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia or myelodysplastic syndromes: comparison with fludarabine plus cytarabine without granulocyte colony-stimulating factor.

Purpose: To determine whether granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) administered before, during, and after fludarabine plus cytarabine (ara-C; FA) chemotherapy affected complete response (CR) rate, infection rate, blood count recovery, or survival in patients with newly diagnosed acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

Patients And Methods: A total of 112 patients with newly diagnosed AML (n = 69) or MDS (n = 43) received G-CSF 400 micrograms/m2/d 1 day before (presenting WBC count < 50,000/microL) and/or during (all patients) fludarabine 30 mg/m2/d and ara-C 2 g/m2/d for 5 days (FLAG). G-CSF continued until a CR was achieved. Results were compared with those in 85 newly diagnosed patients (54 AML, 31 MDS) previously treated with FA without G-CSF.

Results: Patients in both groups were relatively old (median age of all patients, 63 years), and were likely to have prognostically unfavorable cytogenetic abnormalities (36% had abnormalities of chromosomes 5 and 7 [-5/-7]). G-CSF accelerated recovery to > or = 1,000 neutrophils (P < .0001; median, 34 days for FA, 21 days for FLAG), but logistic regression provided no evidence that the CR rate was higher with FLAG than with FA (P = .50), with unadjusted CR rates of 63% and 53%, respectively. This may reflect relatively high rates of death before neutrophil recovery in both groups. Rates of infection were similar in both groups. The follow-up duration in remission is short, and much of these data remain censored. To date, survival is similar with FA and FLAG.

Conclusion: On average, G-CSF before, during, and after FA had no effect on CR or infection rates in this population, in which elderly patients and poor prognostic factors were prevalent. The use of FA and laminar airflow rooms rather than more usual therapy needs to be considered when analyzing the results.