A kindred with familial acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is described displaying the concept of anticipation which refers to increased disease severity and/or earlier age at onset with succeeding generations. The affected individual in the first generation was the father (aged 34 years at diagnosis) of two affected members of a single sibship (aged 24 and 25 years). The fourth patient is the son (aged 4 years) of one of these brothers in the second generation. The AML was of different subtypes and a karyotypic abnormality (del[6q]) was detected in one of three patients. The first-generation patient died during chemotherapy; the remaining three patients are in complete remission after chemotherapy and autologous bone marrow transplantation.