Screening for BCR-ABL fusion gene among Iraqi children with ALL using real-time PCR

Abstract

Background: Pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a heterogeneous disease with diversegenetic subtypes and different clinical behavior. ALL with BCR-ABL is a subtype with distinctiveresponse to treatment.Objectives: This study aims to study the expression of BCR-ABL transcript in Iraqi pediatric ALLpatients.Patients, materials and methods: A case-control prospective study was conducted to study theexpression of minor and major BCR-ABL fusion genes in bone marrow aspirates of 48 pre-treated ALLpatients and 46 control subjects using qPCR technique. Those aspirates were collected from ChildrenWelfare Teaching Hospital in Baghdad over a 1 year period from July 2013 to June 2014.Results: From 48 patients with ALL 21 were males and 27 were females. Age ranged from 2 months to13 years with a median age of 5 years. Twenty six of these patients aged between 1-5 years. Molecularscreening detected minor BCR-ABL transcript in 2.1% of ALL patients whereas major BCR-ABLtranscript was not expressed in any of ALL patients. Contrary to the control group, minor BCR-ABLtranscript was detected in three samples.Conclusion: The molecular prevalence of minor and major BCR-ABL fusion gene in Iraqi children withALL is to somewhat similar to previous reports worldwide.