Azacitidine might be beneficial in a subgroup of older AML patients compared to intensive chemotherapy: a single centre retrospective study of 227 consecutive patients

Table 2 Treatment outcome of patients treated with azacitidine or intensive chemotherapy

	Azacitidine (N=26)	Intensive chemotherapy (N=90)		P-value
	Azacitidine (N=26)	All (N=90)	Excl. allo-SCT (*N =* 76)	Aza vs all IC	Aza vs IC excl. allo-SCT
Overall survival
1-year	57%	56%	50%	0.93¹	0.80¹
2-year	35%	35%	31%	0.92¹	0.50¹
Response, overall	11 (42%)	68 (76%)	54 (71%)	<0.001	0.005
CR	9 (35%)	63 (70%)	49 (65%)
PR	2 (8%)	5 (6%)	5 (7%)
No CR or PR	15 (58%)	22 (24%)	22 (29%)
Early death
within 4 weeks	1 (4%)	4 (4%)	4 (4%)	0.88¹	0.79¹
within 8 weeks	2 (8%)	11 (12%)	11 (12%)	0.51¹	0.40¹
Relapse/death after response
within 1 year	4 (36%)	39 (57%)	34 (63%)	0.21¹	0.18¹
within 2 years	5 (45%)	42 (62%)	37 (69%)	0.30¹	0.14¹
Days in hospital, median (range)
month 1–3	0.5 (0–30)	56 (2–85)	54 (2–85)	<0.001	0.029
month 4–6	0 (0–8)	0 (0–81)	0 (0–81)	0.036	0.006
RBC transfusions, median per month (range)
month 1–3	2.7 (0–10)	7 (0–32)	7 (0–32)	<0.001	<0.001
month 4–6	0 (0–13)	1 (0–8)	0 (0–8)	0.97	0.65
PLT transfusions, median per month (range)
month 1–3	0.3 (0–7)	5 (0–19)	5 (0–19)	<0.001	<0.001
month 4–6	0 (0–1)	0 (0–8)	0 (0–8)	0.016	0.047

¹Log rank test. Patients with promyelocytic leukaemia (N = 14) were excluded from this analysis. Abbreviations: excl. allo-SCT, excluding patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation; IC, intensive chemotherapy; Aza, azacitidine; vs, versus; CI, confidence interval; CR, complete remission; PR, partial remission; RBC, red blood cell; PLT, platelet. Results are reported as N (%) unless otherwise indicated.

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