Type of leukaemia
The majority of patients had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL)
(79.8%; n=363/455), most of which were B-ALL (87.9%, 319/363), with
the remainder having T-ALL (12.1%, 44/363). Among patients with B-ALL,
blast genotype revealed that the largest group had hyperdiploid ALL
(37.0%; n=118/319), followed by ETV6-RUNX1 fusion (17.9%; n=57/319)
and normal karyotype (12.9%; n=41/319) (Supplementary Table 1). 20.4%
(n=65/319) displayed a variety of other cytogenetics abnormalities.
Among patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), the largest subsets
had either t(8;21) fusion (13.4%, n=11/82) or t(15;17) fusion (13.4%,
n=11/82) (Supplementary Table 1). There were 10 patients with AML whose
cytogenetics were unknown. There was an over-representation of AML
patients among Aboriginal children compared to non-Aboriginal children
in SA/NT (60.0%, 9/15 vs. 14.4%, 27/187, p=0.001). This difference was
not observed in WA (14.3%, 2/14 vs. 22.6%, 54/239, p=0.46), although
this analysis was limited by the small number of Aboriginal patients
diagnosed with AML in WA. All of the Aboriginal patients with AML were
from Very Remote areas.