Abnormal expression and methylation of PRR34-AS1 are associated with adverse outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia

It was previously reported that PRR34-AS1 was overexpressed in some solid tumors. PRR34-AS1 promoter was shown to have a differential methylation region (DMR), and was hypomethylated in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Therefore, the present study used real-time quantitative PCR (RQ-PCR) to explore the expression characteristics of PRR34-AS1 in AML. In addition, the correlation between the expression of PRR34-AS1 and clinical prognosis of AML was determined. The findings of this study indicated that high PRR34-AS1 expression was bound up with shorter overall survival (OS) in AML patients (p = 0.002). Moreover, patients with high expression of PRR34-AS1 had significantly lower complete remission (CR) rate compared with those with low expression of PRR34-AS1 after induction chemotherapy. Furthermore, multivariate analysis confirmed that PRR34-AS1 expression was an independent factor affecting CR in whole-AML, non-APL-AML, and CN-AML patients (p = 0.032, 0.039, and 0.036, respectively). Methylation-specific PCR (MSP) and bisulfite sequencing PCR (BSP) were used to explore the methylation status of PRR34-AS1. PRR34-AS1 promoter showed a pattern of hypomethylation in AML patients compared with normal controls (p = 0.122). Notably, of whole-AML and non-APL-AML patients, PRR34-AS1 hypomethylated patients presented a significantly shorter OS than those with a hypermethylated PRR34-AS1 (p = 0.010 and 0.037, respectively). Multivariate analysis confirmed that the hypomethylation of PRR34-AS1 served as an independent prognostic indicator in both whole-cohort AML and non-APL-AML categories (p = 0.057 and 0.018, respectively). In summary, the findings of this study showed that abnormalities in PRR34-AS1 are associated with poor prognosis in AML. Therefore, monitoring this index may be important in the prognosis of AML and can provide information on effective chemotherapy against the disease.