Combined Mongolism and Leukemia

Abstract

THE COMBINATION of mongolism and leukemia in the same patient would be expected, by chance alone, to occur in 1 of 10 million children in the age range 0 to 4 years. Krivit and Good¹calculated these figures from the frequency of mongolism of 1 per 500 live births,²and leukemia deaths of about 5 per 100,000 in the same age range.³Stewart and co-workers⁴showed that combined mongolism and leukemia was approximately 20 times more frequent than expected. It is probable that in addition to mongolism with trisomy-21 or equivalent, the risk of malignant disease may be increased in other disorders with genic imbalance resulting from abnormal karyotypes.^5,6Cases of mongolism and leukemia in the same family have also been described.^7-11 This report describes chromosomal studies on eight mongoloids in whom a diagnosis of leukemia was made. The clinical courses and hematological findings