Prevalence of ETV6/RUNX1 Fusion Gene in Pediatric Patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Iran

Objective: etv6/runx1 (also known as tel/aml1) is the most frequent gene fusion in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (all). sixty-three patients were enrolled in this study to explore the distribution of this gene in iranian population. methods: this study used 63 peripheral blood and bone marrow (pb/bm) samples from children with all. immunophenotyping of pb and bm samples were performed using flow cytometry to illustrate the lineage. moreover, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (rt-pcr) technique was used to amplify transcripts of leukemia-specific chromosome fusion gene etv6/runx1 and to monitor the expression levels of the etv6/runx1 in patients according to van dongen et al protocol. findings: on the basis of french-american-british (fab) classification, 47 individuals had all-l1. the incidence of etv6/runx1 fusion gene in this study was 34.9%. the laboratory and clinical features of twenty two etv6/runx1 positive all cases were similar to those of other studies. the most positive cases of etv6/runx1 fusion gene had the early pre b all and pre b all immunophenotypes. conclusion: the etv6/runx1 fusion gene is a common genetic anomaly in iranian childhood all patients and the prevalence of the etv6/runx1 fusion gene is similar to that of all patients in other countries. however early pre b cells were the most common type in studied patients.