Five-Year Follow-up of Patients Receiving Imatinib for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia
Brian Druker, François Guilhot, Stephen G. O’Brien, Insa Gathmann, Hagop M. Kantarjian, Norbert Gattermann +4 more
New England Journal of Medicine
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The cause of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a constitutively active BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase. Imatinib inhibits this kinase, and in a short-term study was superior to interferon alfa plus cytarabine for newly diagnosed CML in the chronic phase. For 5 years, we followed patients with CML who received imatinib as initial therapy. METHODS: We randomly assigned 553 patients to receive imatinib and 553 to receive interferon alfa plus cytarabine and then evaluated them for overall and event-free survival; progression to accelerated-phase CML or blast crisis; hematologic, cytogenetic, and molecular responses; and adverse events. RESULTS: The median follow-up was 60 months. Kaplan-Meier estimates of cumulative best rates of complete cytogenetic response among patients receiving imati