BIOLOGICAL AND CLINICAL-SIGNIFICANCE OF CYTOGENETIC STUDY ON 100 ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC-LEUKEMIA AND 219 ACUTE NONLYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA

Objective To further investigate the role that cytogenetic may play in the diagnosis and prognosis of leukemia,a study was conducted in 319 acute leukemias.Methods 100 patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 219 patients with acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia (ANLL) w ere from Rui Jin Hospital, Xin Hua Hospital, Ren Ji Hospital and Shang hai Children's Hospital. Their cytogenetic data were analyzed together with those of morphology, immunology and clinical prognosis. Results In ALL group, 48 cases were karyotypically normal whereas 52 cases rev ealed chromosomal changes, among which 32 had quantitative abnormaliti es and 20 had qualitative abnormalities. The translocation t(9;22) was identified in 11 out of 20 cases of structural aberrations (55%). Spe cific structural aberrations t(9;22) and t(8;14) were detected to be r elated to B-lineage associated differentiation antigens and t(8; 14) a lso with ALL-L3 according to FAB classification. With regard to clinic al prognosis, the survival rate of structural aberration subset decrea sed significantly compared with the normal karyotype subset (P<0.05). However, no statistically significant difference was found between hyp erdiploidy subset (not including near-triploidy) and normal karyotype subset (P>0.75). In ANLL group, 80% of de novo patients and relapsed p atients had chromosomal abnormalities. Importantly, structural aberrat ions accounted for 73% of these abnormalities and frequently correspon ded to specific types of FAB classification. Relevant prognostic studi es demonstrated that t(15;17) subset had the best overall survival pro bability, followed by t(8;21) and normal karyotype subset, while the n umerical aberration subset showed a relatively poor prognosis. Conclus ion Our data confirmed that cytogenetic study is important for the mol ecular study of the leukemogenesis. On the other hand,it also provides an independent parameter for prognosis in acute leukemia.