History of EWOG-MDS
The European Working Group on MDS in childhood (EWOG-MDS) was founded in 1993 by members from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands and later joined by the Czech Republic, Switzerland and recently Poland, Belgium, Ireland and Spain. The aims of EWOG-MDS are to bring together clinicians and researchers with an interest in childhood MDS and JMML, initiate collaborative studies, disseminate information about childhood MDS and serve as a resource for those being interested in childhood MDS.
EWOG-MDS has performed several retrospective studies on the clinical features and the results of stem cell transplantation (SCT) in juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) as well as studies on patients with MDS and abnormalities involving chromosome 7 (the most common cytogenetic abnormality in childhood MDS), and patients with the MDS subtype refractory cytopenia. The first EWOG-MDS prospective study on childhood MDS and JMML was conducted from 1998 until December 2006 (EWOG-MDS 98). The new study EWOG-MDS 2006 opened on the 1st January 2007.
The backbone of EWOG-MDS is the network of Regional Coordinators who have the responsibilities for local data-collection and reporting to the database. Morphological and cytogenetic boards have been organized. Smears and cytogenetic analysis from all patients included in EWOG-MDS 2006 are reviewed centrally by national reference centers. The database is located at the coordinating study center at the University Children's Hospital, Freiburg, Germany.