[Greg H]

Hi amkjud!

As Neil reports, chromosomal abnormalities can definitely come and go from bone marrow reports. And I think he is exactly right that, often, this is matter of what happened in the sampling. It's also important to remember that neither of the common ways for testing chromosomal abnormalities -- karytoype and FISH -- are actually based on a statistically significant sample of cells. So it can be a mistake to put too much weight on the exact percentages in the results.

In my case, I had only a chromosome 1 abnormality when diagnosed, that was joined by Trisomy 8 nine months later, and the Trisomy 8 first expanded, and then pretty much disappeared, after immunosuppressive therapy.

When you say your son doesn't fit the WHO/FAB, do you mean the docs don't agree on whether he is RA, RCMD, or RAEB, etc.?

Those classifications can be a bit of a hard call. My transplant doc diagnosed me as RCMD (dysplasia in all three cell lines in the biopsy) but my doc at the National Institutes of Health said some of that dysplasia was borderline and diagnosed me as having dysplasia in only one line. I think the WHO has a classification that is for hard to pin down variants of MDS.

Hope that helps. Take Care!

Greg