Research Article Survival of Mexican Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia under Treatment with the Protocol from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 00-01 Elva Jiménez-Hernández, 1 Ethel Zulie Jaimes-Reyes, 1 José Arellano-Galindo, 2 Xochiketzalli García-Jiménez, 3 Héctor Manuel Tiznado-García, 1 María Teresa Dueñas-González, 1 Octavio Martínez Villegas, 1 Berenice Sánchez-Jara, 1 Vilma Carolina Bekker-Méndez, 1 María Guadalupe Ortíz-Torres, 1 Antonio Ortíz-Fernández, 1 Teresa Marín-Palomares, 1 and Juan Manuel Mejía-Aranguré 4 1 Departamento de Hematolog´ ıa Pedi´ atrica, Unidad M´ edica de Alta Especialidad (UMAE), Centro M´ edico Nacional “La Raza”, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), Avenida Jacarandas Esquina Vallejo S/N colonia La Raza, 02990 Mexico, DF, Mexico 2 Laboratorio de Investigaci´ on, Hospital Infantil de M´ exico “Federico G´ omez”, Secretar´ ıa de Salud, Calle Doctor Marquez 162, Colonia Doctores, Delegaci´ on Cuauht´ emoc, 06720 Mexico, DF, Mexico 3 Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Aut´ onoma de M´ exico, Avenida Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico City, DF, Mexico 4 Unidad de Investigaci´ on en Epidemiolog´ ıa Cl´ ınica, UMAE Hospital de Pediatr´ ıa, Centro M´ edico Nacional “Siglo XXI”, IMSS, Avenida Cuauhtemoc 330, 4to Piso Ediicio de la Academia Nacional de Medicina, 06720 Mexico, DF, Mexico Correspondence should be addressed to Juan Manuel Mej´ ıa-Arangur´ e; juan.mejiaa@imss.gob.mx Received 4 July 2014; Revised 3 October 2014; Accepted 17 October 2014 Academic Editor: Richard J. Q. McNally Copyright © 2015 Elva Jim´ enez-Hern´ andez et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Our aim in this paper is to describe the results of treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in Mexican children treated from 2006 to 2010 under the protocol from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) 00-01. he children were younger than 16 years of age and had a diagnosis of ALL de novo. he patients were classiied as standard risk if they were 1–9.9 years old and had a leucocyte count <50 × 10 9 /L, precursor B cell immunophenotype, no mediastinal mass, CSF free of blasts, and a good response to prednisone. he rest of the patients were deined as high risk. Of a total of 302 children, 51.7% were at high risk. he global survival rate was 63.9%, and the event-free survival rate was 52.3% ater an average follow-up of 3.9 years. he percentages of patients who died were 7% on induction and 14.2% in complete remission; death was associated mainly with infection (21.5%). he relapse rate was 26.2%. he main factor associated with the occurrence of an event was a leucocyte count >100 × 10 9 /L. he poor outcomes were associated with toxic death during induction, complete remission, and relapse. hese factors remain the main obstacles to the success of this treatment in our population. 1. Introduction Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is the most common cancer in children and adolescents and is the most frequent cancer in Hispanic children including Mexican children [1]. In developed regions, including North America, Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, the survival ater 5 years is >90% and the cure rate is 85% [2–6]. hese results are now possible because of the implementation of clinical assays involving cooperation between countries [7– 11]. However, in developing countries, the survival rate is low, possibly because of the lower quality of medical attention [12]. Several factors are included in the classiication of risk: clinical, cytogenetic, immunological, and molecular [13–17]. Despite the availability of these factors for classifying risk, in several developing countries the 1993 National Cancer Institute (NCI) criteria [18] continues to be used for the classiication of relapse risk. hese criteria take into account Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2015, Article ID 576950, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/576950