Cytarabine: Low-Dose, High-Dose, No Dose?

Cytarabine is the mainstay of current treatment for acute myeloblastic leukemia and is associated with an expected remission rate of more than 50 per cent. Reasons for failure include not only resistance of leukemic cells to drugs but also complications of the treatment and, perhaps, lack of potential for regeneration of normal marrow. In patients who have not previously been treated with cytarabine, it is unusual to find that the leukemic cells are unresponsive to the drug, but they may become so at any point in the course of the disease. The action of cytarabine requires a mechanism of transport . . .