Myelodysplastic Syndrome

Myelodysplastic syndromes have historically been subjected to incomplete definitions and biologic understanding of disease.1,2 With the better understanding of this disease by morphology, cytogenetic evaluation and molecular testing it is now easier to categorize this disease. Myelodysplastic syndrome could not be described as a distinct syndrome until the first half of the 20th century when bone marrow biopsies were started in routine. Still, early suggestive reports can be found in the medical literature: a 1907 report by Luzzatto of megaloblastic “pseudo-aplastic anemia,” 3, could have been MDS cases.
In the mid-1920s, Di Guglielmo in Naples described a group of marrow disorders associated with bizarrely shaped erythrocytes and low peripheral