Relationship between Quantitative Monitoring of WT1 Gene and Prognosis in Patients with Acute Leukemia

Abstract

To investigate the exprassion of WT1 gene in patients with adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and its clinical significance. Sixty-three newly diagnosed patients with acute myeloid leukemia were selected. Quantitative RT-PCR was used to detect the expression of WT1 gene in the 63 AML patients and 20 non-AML controls. WT1 gene was highly expressed in AML patents and its expression in the low-risk group was significantly lower than that in middle-risk group and high-risk group (P<0.05), and no significant difference of WT1 gene expression between middle-risk and high-risk group was observed. In the patients of middle-risk and high-risk patients, the expression of WT1 gene in the remission group was significantly lower than that in the patients of non-remission after treatment (P<0.05). The non-remission patients after first treatment in middle-risk and high-risk group were treated with second induction therapy. After second induction therapy, the WT1 expression in remission patients was significantly decreased (P<0.05) in comparison with that in patients still in non-remission. There was a negative correlation between WT1 expression and the 2-year overall survival rate in the newly diagnosed middle and high-risk AML patients. The detection of WT1 gene expression can help to divide AML patients into low-/middle-/high-risk groups and to evaluate therapeutic response and clinical prognosis in middle and high-risk AML patients.