Clinical Outcome of Hypomethylating Agents in Hypocellular MDS: Mayo Clinic Experience

Introduction: Hypocellular myelodysplastic syndrome (h-MDS) represents only a small portion of MDS, of which, the clinical significance and outcomes are not well understood. Both laboratory and clinical evidence suggests that h-MDS shares immune-mediated pathogenic mechanisms similar to acquired aplastic anemia. As a result, immunosuppressive therapy (IST) has been the mainstay treatment. Since h-MDS is poorly understood and reported response rates to IST vary, we retrospectively reviewed the outcome of our patients with hypocellular MDS and identified the effectiveness of alternative therapy using hypomethylating agents (HMA).

Methods: AllMDS patients over a 13-year period (June 1997 to May 2010) were captured after an IRB approval was obtained. Patients' demographics, labs, bone marrow aspirates and biopsies as well as cytogenetic data were collected. We used the currently accepted age-adjusted criteria to define hypocellularity as ≤ 30% in patients <70 years old, and ≤20% in >70 years old. Only patients with available response data were included in the final analysis. Survival estimates were calculated using Kaplan-Meier curves.

Results: We identified 65 (8%) h-MDS patients from a cohort of 827 adult MDS. Median age was 68 years (range, 20-90), with 69% males. The largest group of patients were RAEB-1 at 9 (14%) and RAEB-2 at 14 (22%) along with RCMD at 18 (28%) and 15 (23%) MDS-U, 2 (3%) MDS 5q, 4 (6%) RARS and 2 (3%) were considered atypical. Cytogenetic analysis was normal in 17 (26%) with 7 (11%) having trisomy 8, and 11 (16%) and 14 (22%) having abnormalities of chromosome 7 and 5, respectively. IPSS-R were very low, low, intermediate, high, and very high in 4%, 30%, 28%, 21% and 17%, respectively. Leukemic transformation (LT) occurred in 6 (9%). The 4 year overall survival and progression free survival was 35% and 34%, respectively. Median overall survival and progression free survival was 30.2 and 29.7 months, respectively.

Nine out 65 h-MDS patients were treated with a HMA, azacitidine (4) or decitabine (5). The median age of patients was 71 years (range, 66-85) with 6 (66%) being males. The median cellularity of the diagnostic bone marrow was 15% with the majority of patients presenting with RAEB-1 (11%) and RAEB-2 (55%) classification and 2 (22%) cases of RCMD as well as 1 (11%) case of MDS with isolated 5q. Cytogenetic analysis was normal in 3 (33%). IPSS-R were low in 1 (11%), intermediate in 4 (44%), high in 1 (11%) and very high risk in 3 (33%).

The median time to initiation of a HMA from diagnosis was 5 months with response assessed at a median of 4.2 months. Two patients had received prior therapy including lenalidomide (for MDS 5q) and one had 1 cycle of trial therapy. Two patients (22%) achieved a marrow complete remission at a median time of 2.95 months; with one case of relapse at 9.8 months using HMA. Three patients (33%) had LT at a median time of 7.9 months post initiation of HMA. Median overall survival of patients with LT was 20 days. A total of 4 (44%) patients remain alive with a leukemia free survival of 67% at 2 years. In comparing to h-MDS patients without HMA treatment versus HMA treated, median OS was 28.2 vs 50.9 months (p=0.41) and PFS was 28.1 vs 40.6 months (p=0.69), respectively.

Conclusions: The results from our clinical experience confirm that hypocellular MDS is a rare variant and that it is distinct from normocellular/hypercellular MDS. Two thirds of h-MDS received HMA for the treatment of higher risk disease (RAEB1-2). HMA has some efficacy in h-MDS. Further studies are warranted to better understand the clinical significance and outcomes of hypocellular MDS.