Perlmutter Cancer Center

If you are the parent or guardian of a child diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) also born with Down Syndrome (DS), your child may qualify to participate in a clinical trial investigating "response based" risk stratification for treatment of this disease.  Patients whose leukemia responds well to treatment, he/she will receive less treatment than children with DS-AML receive to date, in an effort to maintain high cure rates while decreasing the number or severity of side-effects.  For patients, in whom leukemia does not respond well to the first course of treatment, then they will be called "high risk" and treatment will be changed to receive higher doses of cytarabine (Ara-C) and the addition of mitoxantrone.  This is a change from the standard of care.  This clinical trial is designed to find the best balance between killing the cancer and lowering the risk of future side effects in this group of patients.