Introduction. Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a large group of blood and bone marrow oncological diseases characterised by the accumulation of undifferentiated myeloid lin eage cells in peripheral blood or bone marrow. Approximately one-third of leukaemia cases are AML and almost 40% of deaths due to leukaemia are associated with acute myeloid leukaemia. The most inclusive classification of AML is suggested by The World Health Organisation (WHO), which comprises blast morphology, cytogenetic, molecular genetic variations and immunophenotypic markers. New biomarkers and in sight into their distinct expression are crucial for the expansion of the WHO classification while the association between distinct types of blast immunophenotypes, blood count parameters, cytomorphology features and genetic testing results would carry significant clinical or prognostic value.
The aim of the study was to evaluate the association between immunophenotypic markers of AML patients’ blasts and other results of laboratory testing.
Materials and methods. Anonymised data of 95 patients with AML diagnosis was collected. This data was used to find associations between immunophenotype data acquired by flow cytometry and the results of complete blood count, genetic conditions associated with the patients and morphological evaluation of cells. Patients were classified into two populations according to biomarker expression data: expression absent (CDX–) or expression present (CDX+).
Results. Quantitative parameters of AML patients’ blood provided by a hematology analyser showed a statistically significant association to changes in blast biomarker expression: leukocytosis was statistically significantly associated with CD14+, CD15+, CD64+, CD99+, CD117–, CD133–; lymphocytosis – with CD36+ and CD133–, lymphopenia – with CD99–, CD117–; monocytosis – with CD7+, CD14+, CD15+, CD33+, CD36+, CD96+, CD117+, CD113+; basophilia – with CD14+. The cytoplasmic granulation observed in the cytomorphological study had a statistically significant association with CD11a+ and CD117+ AML patients. Genetic mutations found in AML patients have statistically significant associations with the biomarker expression: mutation in FLT3 gene was statistically significantly associated with CD11b+, CD36+, CD64+, CD133–; mutation in NPM1 gene – with CD14+, CD34–, CD117–; mutation in TP53 gene – with CD33+; mutation in IDH1 gene – with CD11b–, CD15–, CD96–; mutation in IDH2 gene – with CD64–, HLA-DR–; mutation in CEBPA gene – with CD64+ and CD96+.
Conclusions. The obtained results showed that there are statistically significant associations between AML patients’ blast immunophenotype and blood indices, cytomorphological and genetic test results.
