Six cases of aggressive natural killer-cell leukemia in a Chinese population

Aggressive natural killer cell leukemia (ANKL) is a rare hematological malignancy that is particularly common among the Asian population. In the current study, we retrospectively evaluated six Chinese ANKL patients, including five males and one female, with a median age of 42 years (range 22 to 50 years). A number of unusual pathogenic manifestations were found in these ANKL patients, such as isolated extraocular muscle involvement, and hemophagocytic syndrome (HPS) with acute renal failure and multiple cavity effusion. Four of the patients died between two and six months after the diagnosis however, there were two ANKL cases whose clinical behavior differed from the typical clinical course. One survived for over 30 months after splenectomy and chemotherapy treatment, and another ANKL case derived from chronic lymphoproliferative disorders of NK-cells (CLPD-NK) was treated with allogeneic bone marrow transplant (allo-BMT) and survived over 18 months. In conclusion, four cases experienced an aggressive clinical course whereas two demonstrated an indolent manifestation of their disease. New therapeutic regimens including allo-BMT should be optimized in order to improve outcomes of this disease.