Concomitant hairy cell and acute myeloid leukemia

Secondary malignancies in patients with hairy cell leukemia (HCL) are well described and treatment of HCL is discussed as their cause. We describe a 58-yr-old patient who presented with both acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and HCL at the same time. Treatment with cladribine, daunorubicin and cytosine arabinoside, followed by autologous stem cell transplantation, induced complete remission of AML and hematologic remission of HCL for 22 months, when he relapsed with AML. This concomitant occurrence of AML and HCL is suggestive of a genetic predisposition rather then coincidence or relation to purine analoga.