Influence of p53 mutation on pathological grade, but not prognosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Mutations in the p53 gene were detected in 27 of the 107 (25%) cases of non -Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), examined by assaying the transcriptional activit y of p53 in yeast. A relatively high mutation rate of p53 was observed in B -cell intermediate-grade NHL and in T-cell high-grade immunoblastic NHL, in contrast to the relatively low mutation rate observed in other pathologica l classifications. However, retrospective analyses of all 76 cases revealed that the survival profile and therapeutic responses were very similar in N HL patients bearing lymphomas with a mutant p53 or with the wild-type p53 e ven within the subclasses characterized by frequent p53 mutation. In patien ts with high-intermediate grade tumors, the median survival period was 24 m onths in mutated p53 cases and 14 months in wildtype cases. Complete remiss ion (CR) was observed in 9 of the 17 patients (53%) with mutated forms of p 53 and 18 of the 35 patients (51%) with wild-type p53 genes. Our analyses o f NHL patients revealed that the presence of p53 mutations may influence pa thological grades of NHL, but did not strongly correlate with poor prognosi s or reduced chemo/radiosensitivity in NHL. Hence, mutations of p53 do not serve as a prognostic, or chemo/radiosensitivity marker in NHL.