Molecular Detection of 13q Deletion in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Abstract

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is one of the most common hematologic malignancies in adults, cytogenetic studies revealed recurring abnormalities of which the most common are structural abnormalities of chromosome 13q (Chung et al., 2000).

This work was preformed on 14 newly diagnosed cases ofCLL in order to study the incidence of 13q deletion among CLL patients using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technique. 13q deletion was found in 8/14 (57.1%) of cases, the majority of these cases 7/8 (87.5%) was typical as regarding lymphocyte morphology and surface markers.

The high incidence of this deletion among CLL patients suggests the presence of a tumor suppressor gene whose loss is relevant for the development of CLL.

Being more common in typical cases which have better prognosis than atypical cases (Dohner et al., 1999), 13q deletion can be considered as a good prognostic a marker in CLL. Keywords

FISH

13q 1-U gene

CLL