[Expression of survivin in patients with acute myeloid leukemia]

Objective of this study was to detect the expression of Survivin in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and investigate the relationship of its expression levels with clinical variates and its correlations with BCL-2 ,Bcl-xL and MCL-1. The expression of Survivin, BCL-2, Bcl-xL and MCL-1 were measured by immunohistochemistry in bone marrow biopsy of 63 newly diagnosed AML patients, and the relationship between its expression level and clinical parameters (age, sex, WBC count, diagnosis, prognosis), especially fusion protein AML1/ETO was investigated. The results showed that the expression level of Survivin in newly diagnosed AML patients was higher than that of normal controls (P < 0.01), the expression levels of Survivin did not correlate with age, sex, and WBC counts of patients and so on. There was no significant difference of Survivin expression between different NCCN prognosis groups, either between patients with AML1/ETO or FLT3-ITD mutation and the other patients. Survivin positive patients were got to have lower CR rate but higher relapse rate, however that was not significant in statistics. Indeed, the cumulative survivin rate of Survivin positive patients were lower than that of Survivin negative patients (P = 0.04). Finally, positive correlation between Survivin and MCL-1 was also observed (r = 0.639, P = 0.000). It is concluded that overexpression of Survivin are closely related with occurrence and development of acute leukemia, and may be used as an indicator of prognosis evaluation. In addition, Survivin and MCL-1 may have a relationship of cooperation or interaction.