[Greg H]

Hi All!

I was playing around with MD Anderson's alternative to IPSS (which is actually pretty informative for low risk folks) and ran across a term for which I can't seem to find a good definition: "diploid cytogenetics."

This was used to describe a particular chromosomal abnormality in MDS patients in this sentence: "In this analysis, diploid and 5q only were favorable cytogenetic, all others were considered as unfavorable cytogenetics."

Googling got me some references to diploid cytogenetics in AML, but no definition. I know the term can be used to refer to the full complement of chromosomes when the cell is in the midst of dividing and we humans have 46 instead of 23, but I'm not sure what it means outside that context. Surely there aren't MDSers walking around constantly with two full sets of chromosomes in their progenitor cells.

Maybe it refers to a situation where folks have two copies of one chromosome; I'm not sure. But I thought maybe one of you has this or at least knows what it means.

Happy Independence Day to the Yanks amongst us, Happy Belated Canada Day to our friends North of the Border, with apologies to you English and best wishes to the Manx rocket Mark Cavendish as The Tour de France gets underway today.

Take care!

Greg