Boston, MA - For patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS),
choosing the appropriate treatment depends heavily on the
prognosis. Those patients at the highest risk of dying from
their disease are typically offered the most aggressive
therapies, while patients at lower risk could live several years
with MDS, needing only supportive care or other relatively side-
effect free treatments. While some clinical variables are
useful, current methods for predicting prognosis for individual
patients are not ideal. Patients with the same clinical features
can have very different outcomes from their disease. Researchers
at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed a means of
improving prognosis methods and predicting how long patients
with MDS will live after diagnosis by identifying certain gene
mutations in their abnormal bone marrow. These findings are
published in the June 30 issue of the New England Journal of
Medicine. MDS is a cancer of the bone marrow and blood that can
range in severity and likelihood