Prognostic Significance of Secreted Frizzled-Related Protein 2 Expression in Cytogenetically Normal Primary Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Background: Deregulation of secreted frizzled-related protein 2 (sFRP2) has been found in many types of cancer. However, the pattern of sFRP2 expression in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is still unclear.

Methods: This study aimed to validate the prognostic significance of sFRP2 expression in 54 older patients with cytogenetic normal acute myeloid leukemia (CN-AML) using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction.

Results: sFRP2 expression was decreased markedly in patients compared with controls (P < 0.001). No correlation was found between sFRP2 gene expression and WBCs, hemoglobin, platelets, FAB type, NMP1 and FLT3/ITD mutations at diagnosis. All patients were treated with standard induction chemotherapy. Patients with high sFRP2 expression had higher incidence of complete remission rate (P = 0.04) and better overall survival (P = 0.026). Multivariate analysis revealed that high sFRP2 expression was a prognostic factor for older patients with CN-AML.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that sFRP2 gene expression at diagnosis had an impact on outcome of elderly CN-AML patients.