Faggot cells

Synonyms

Occurrence of numerous Auer rods; Auer rods; leukemia cells;

First Describer

Auer rods were first described in 1903 by Dr. John Auer and named after him (Seghal 2023).

The FAB classification of bone marrow aspirates was developed in 1976 by the French-American-British Working Group (FAB) (Gressner 2013).

A Faggot cell is the appearance of an immature cell with bundled, conspicuously long Auer rods (Herold 2022) that lie distributed in the cytoplasm without order (Alpay 2019).

According to the FAB classification, Faggot cells are the typical criterion of different types of acute myeloid leukemia (Gressner 2013). For example, they are found in acute promyelocytic leukemia = APL (Herold 2022), in myelodysplastic syndromes = MDS and in myelodysplastic / myeloproliferative neoplasms = MDS / MPN (Seghal 2023).

For acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), the appearance of Faggot cells is probative for this disease (Herold 2022).

In acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia, Faggot cells are found histologically in the cytoplasm (Herold 2022).

Histologically, Faggot cells show a typical Faggot shape of Auer rods (Gressner 2013). The Auer rods are usually larger than those of other AML forms (Haferlach 2020).

The presence of Faggot cells suggests a better prognosis of acute myeloid leukemia as a marker of maturation and differentiation (Seghal 2023).

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