Prevalence of BCR-ABL Gene Fusions in Patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia with Multiplex Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a clonal malignancy of hematopoietic stem cells. Type of fusion in these patients can be clinically significant and help to better understand the pathogenesis of leukemic cells with t (9:22). The aim of this study is to check BCR-ABL mutations and determine the prevalence of various gene fusions using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method in patients with CML.
After making sure of having the disease and signing the written consent, 5-8 ml blood was taken from patients with aseptic technique. After RNA extraction, blood samples were centrifuged to separate mononuclear cells (MNCs) and complete RNA was extracted. Multiplex reaction PCR was carried out in 35 cycles.
Findings: All 40 patients were positive in terms of BCR-ABL fusions. Of them 21 persons (52.5%) had b3a2 fusion and 16 persons (38.88%) with b2a2 fusion and finally 3 persons with ale2 fusion.
Uniformity of reaction products and the results obtained in this study showed that RT-PCR method is feasible as a fast, sensitive and safe method to determine the prevalence of BCR-ABL genes in the sampling of peripheral blood. Also, the difference in the rate of fusion due to racial differences in the population can be studied.