the association of flt3-itd gene mutation with bone marrow blast cell count, cd34, cyclin d1, bcl-xl and hent1 expression in acute myeloid leukemia patients

Background & objective: flt3-itd has been recently used as a molecular prognostic marker for risk classification in acute myeloid leukemia (aml) therapy. in this study we aimed to investigate the association of flt3-itd gene mutation with bone marrow blast cell count, cd34 expression as malignant cell burden, cyclin d1 and bcl-xl expressions as indexes of cell proliferation and anti-apoptosis and human equilibrative nucleoside transporter 1 (hent1) expression as cytarabine transporter during aml treatment. methods: we investigated flt3-itd mutations, bone marrow blast cell count, cd34, cyclin d1, bcl-xl and hent1 expression in bone marrow aspirates from 22 de novo aml patients in a cross sectional study. results: flt3-itd mutations were observed in 5 out of 22 de novo aml patients (22.7%). patient with flt3-itd mutations had higher blast cell counts (79.5% vs 56.1%, p=0.004). in patients with flt3-itd mutations, cd34 and cyclin d1 expressions were higher (mfi 328.80 vs 25.78, p=0.003 and mfi 74.51 vs 57.15 p=0.005) than the patients without mutations. hent1 expression in aml with flt3-itd mutation was lower (mfi 29.64 versus 56.32, p=0.0000) than in mutation-free aml. there was no significant difference in bcl-xl expression between patients with and without mutations (p=0.61). conclusion: a significant association was found between flt3-itd gene mutations in aml patients with bone marrow blast cell count, cd34, cyclin d1 and hent1 expressions, however no association was obtained with bcl-xl expression. these findings support the role of such mutation in pathogenesis of amland its contribution in rearrangement of standard therapy with cytarabine in management of aml.