Vascular endothelial growth factor levels in childhood acute lymphoblastic and myeloblastic leukemia

Angiogenesis has been associated with the growth, dissemination and metastasis and has been shown to be a prognostic. Although there are some data suggesting that angiogenesis may have a role in the pathophysiology of leukemia, its role in patient prognosis is yet to be defined. We analyzed the expression level of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), an angiogenesis promoter and its possible- prognostic value in bone marrow samples at the time of diagnosis and remission of acute childhood leukemia patients. Besides 46 patients diagnosed as ALL or AML, 16 children were also included as a control group in the study. Our data have demonstrated that VEGF levels of AML patients were found higher than the control group statistically (P = 0.022). However we could not find any significant difference between VEGF levels of diagnosis and remission in both AML and ALL groups by blastic VEGF expression (P > 0.05). In this study the higher levels of VEGF in AML patients is one of the main findings although we were not able to assess any role of VEGF in predicting prognosis in pediatric leukemia patients by evaluating blastic cell VEGF expression. These results have demonstrated that the relationship between angiogenesis or angiogenesis promoters and hematological malignancies is not clear and simple as different methods or different cells beside different angiogenesis promotors are involved to these studies. So that not only tumor cells and their cytokines but also surrounding cells and their cytokines must be taken into consideration with the standardized study methods in the further studies to obtain a promising treatment approach.