Conditions: Leukemia
Keywords: adult acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (M7) adult acute minimally differentiated myeloid leukemia (M0) adult acute monoblastic leukemia (M5a) adult acute monocytic leukemia (M5b) adult acute myeloblastic leukemia with maturation (M2) adult acute myeloblastic leukemia without maturation (M1) adult acute myelomonocytic leukemia (M4) adult erythroleukemia (M6a) adult pure erythroid leukemia (M6b) adult acute myeloid leukemia with 11q23 (MLL) abnormalities adult acute myeloid leukemia with inv(16)(p13;q22) adult acute myeloid leukemia with t(16;16)(p13;q22) adult acute myeloid leukemia with t(8;21)(q22;q22) secondary acute myeloid leukemia untreated adult acute myeloid leukemia
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 111
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as idarubicin and cytarabine, work in different ways to stop the growth of cancer cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Giving more than one drug (combination chemotherapy) may kill more cancer cells.

PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying how well giving idarubicin together with high-dose cytarabine works in treating patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Detailed description:
OBJECTIVES:

* Determine the complete remission rate (CR).
* Determine the proportion of patients who are bone marrow-positive at day 7 post-induction chemotherapy.
* Further evaluate the toxicity of this regimen.

OUTLINE: Patients receive cytarabine IV over 3 hours every 12 hours on days 1-4 and idarubicin IV over 5-10 minutes on days 1-3. Patients undergo bone marrow aspirate and biopsy 7 days after completion of induction chemotherapy. Patients with \> 25% cellular biopsy or \> 10% abnormal cells on aspirate receive 4 more doses of cytarabine and 1 dose of idarubicin.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients receive cytarabine IV over 3 hours every 12 hours on days 1-4 and idarubicin IV over 5-10 minutes on days 1-3. Patients undergo bone marrow aspirate and biopsy 7 days after completion of induction chemotherapy. Patients with \> 25% cellular biopsy or \> 10% abnormal cells on aspirate receive 4 more doses of cytarabine and 1 dose of idarubicin.

Interventions: intervention 1: cytarabine intervention 2: idarubicin
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None

Protocol document: