North American Burkitt-type ALL with a variant translocation t(8;22)

A variant translocation, t(8;22) (q24;q12), was found in bone marrow (BM) and long-term cultured peripheral blood (PB) cells obtained from an American boy with Burkitt-type acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL-L3, French-American-British classification). Surface marker studies revealed a monoclonal immunoglobulin A (sIgA) with a lambda chain (74%) on the PB cells in a sample containing 74% blast cells. A table summarizing the cases with variant translocations in Burkitt diseases [Burkitt lymphoma (BL) and ALL-L3] is presented, and review of the published data indicates that, generally, the survival of patients with t(8;22)-type BL and ALL-L3 is short and comparable to that of patients with the more common translocation, t(8;14). There appears to be no relationship between t(2;8) or t(8;22) and a specific heavychain sIg. The karyotypes of the BM cells and those of the long-term cultured PB cells, though retaining t(8;22), differed from each other. Chromosomal analyses using cells from long-term culture may reveal karyotypic changes in addition to those seen on direct analysis. The key karyotypic anomaly in Burkitt-type diseases appears to be the breakage of chromosome #8 at band q24.