Partial Long Arm Deletion of a Chromosome 17 in Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia

To the Editor.—  In their article in the Archives (136:825-828, 1976), Golomb and associates report two patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia, both with a partial long arm deletion of a chromosome 17 in marrow cell preparations, and they raise the possibility that this pattern may be specific for the disorder. Support for this hypothesis can be found in a similar case (case 3) with this deletion described in 1967.¹ The full karyotype of a direct marrow preparation from that 6-year-old girl with acute promyelocytic leukemia appears as Fig 6 of a subsequent article.² As in the two cases of Dr Golomb and his collaborators, this E chromosome long arm deletion, described before the availability of banding analysis, represented the patient's only noticeable karyotypic anomaly.