methylation and expression status of the cpg-island of smg1 promoter in acute myeloid leukemia: a follow-up study in patients

Objective: aberrant alterations in dna methylation are known as one of the hallmarks of oncogenesis and play a vital role in the progression of acute myeloid leukemia (aml). smg1 is a member of the phosphoinositide 3-kinases family, acting as a tumor suppressor gene. the aim of this study was the evaluation of the expression level and methylation status of smg1 in aml. materials and methods: in this follow-up study on aml patients admitted to shariati hospital, tehran, iran, the methylation status of smg1 [performed by methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (pcr)] and its expression level (performed by qrt-pcr) were evaluated in three phases: newly diagnosed, under treatment and complete remission. the correlation of the methylation status of smg1, its expression level, and clinical/paraclinical data was analyzed by spss ver.25. results: this study on 18 patients and five control individuals showed that the cpg-islands of the smg1 promoter in newly diagnosed cases is hypomethylated compared to the normal group (p=0.002) the fold change of smg1 expression levels in new cases is 0.464 ± 0.468, while the fold change of smg1 expression levels in under-treatment and in-remission patients is 0.973 ± 1.159 and 0.685 ± 0.885, respectively. in under-treatment patients, white blood cell (wbc) count decreases 114176.36 cell/μl with each unit of increase in fold change of smg1 (p<0.0001), and hb unit increases 2.062 g/dl with each unit of increase in fold change (p<0.0001) also, in the remission phase, the hb unit increases 1.395 g/dl with each unit increase in fold change (p=0.019). conclusion: the robust results of our study suggest that the methylation and expression of have a high impact on the pathogenesis of aml. also, the methylation and expression of smg1 can play a prognostic role in aml.