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KGTUK - Congrats! - hope you get 50 more.
Baile, The people that work with these Drugs everyday don't know why some people have complete responses, some have partial, and some have complete marrow responses. Why the blood and blasts behave differently is a mystery. This is why some researchers look for markers that might indicate or predict what subset of people will respond to these drugs. From what I read the doctors use a flow chart. If some key chromosomes are bad like monosomy 7 it's an instant referral for a transplant. Statistically some subtypes just have a habit of progressing faster. The duration of response is also unknown. They have averages but there are subclasses (very small) were people defy the averages and are able to go many years on these drugs. From all the literature I've read both Dacogen and Vidaza stop working after a while. They've done studies on very large test cases and they just stop working. Having normal cytogenics is certainly a positive. Remissions are also puzzling to researchers. I think a remission means that after taking the drugs a BMB shows normal cytogenetics and less than 5 % blasts. Unfortunately remission tends to not last very long so if going for transplant its the best response you can get but certainly not a deal breaker.
Hope that helps.
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