The present study was performed to establish the prevalence of the recurrent fusion transcripts in Argentinean pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). A total of 380 newly diagnosed children (including 50 infants and 44 T-ALL) were screened by RT-PCR; the incidence of recurrent rearrangements was: ETV6-RUNX1, 12.9%; TCF3-PBX1, 5.0%; BCR-ABL1, 1.6%; and MLL rearrangements, 10.5%. STIL-TAL1 was detected in 22.7% of T-ALL cases. In B-ALL cases, the pEFS was significantly influenced by the presence of genetic alterations. RT-PCR studies improved patients' stratification and also the overall outcome of children treated in a pediatric hospital from a developing country.
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