Therapy of secondary acute nonlymphocytic leukemia with cytarabine.

ACUTE nonlymphocytic leukemia is an increasingly common complication of therapy with alkylating agents or ionizing radiation. Incidences as high as 5 per cent have been reported in patents with Hodgkin's disease who were treated with combined-modality therapy.1 Secondary leukemias are becoming increasingly common in patients treated with alkylating agents for multiple myeloma,2 ovarian carcinoma, and carcinoma of the breast. Unlike patients with "primary" acute nonlymphocytic leukemia, those with the secondary form of the disease rarely respond to conventional regimens for inducing remission. Reported rates of remission induction are in the neighborhood of 10 per cent, with median survival periods of . . .