Glucocorticoid receptor level, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase activity and initial responsiveness to prednisone and vincristine in leukemia

We have investigated glucocorticoid receptor (GR) level, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) activity and the initial responsiveness to prednisone and vincristine in 31 patients with acute lymphatic leukemia (ALL) and with chronic myelogenous leukemia in blast transformation (CML/BT). All 11 patients with low levels of GR (5,000 binding sites per cell) were resistent to this initial treatment whereas 13 of the 20 patients with high levels of GR responded readily. The correlations between clinical responsiveness and GR-level, or between responsiveness and TdT activity were significant to thep