Effectiveness of azacitidine for the treatment of higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes in daily practice: the authors' reply.

Abstract

There is an increasing interest on the effectiveness of azacitidine for the treatment of higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) outside clinical trials. We recently reported the lack of effect of this drug in an unselected population of 821 patients.1 In response to our work, Dinmohamed et al.2 have performed a similar retrospective analysis of a cohort including 121 patients with higher-risk MDS included in the Dutch registry and treated with either chemotherapy, azacitidine or best supportive care (BSC). Both studies are aimed to analyze the potential effect of the different treatment alternatives on overall survival (OS) in large population-based registries of higher-risk MDS patients.