Expression changes and clinical significance of lncRNA HOTAIR in peripheral blood of patients with acute myeloid leukemia

ZHENG Zhuanzhen; GONG Rong; LI Guoxia; REN Fanggang; XU Lijuan

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1002-266X.2018.05.007

Abstract：Objective To investigate the expression level of long non-coding RNA HOTAIR (lncRNA HOTAIR) in the peripheral blood (PB) of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and to evaluate its clinical significance.Methods Ninety-six patients with newly diagnosed AML (86 patients received the induction chemotherapy,56 patients acquired the complete remission) and 30 healthy volunteers were collected.Real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to examine the lncRNA HOTAIR expression in the PB mononuclear cells.The association of lncRNA HOTAIR expression with the clinicopathological characteristics of AML patients was analyzed.The 56 patients with complete remission were followed up,and the Kaplan-Meier method was used to detect the relationship between lncRNA HOTAIR expression and AML patients'survival.Results The qRT-PCR results showed that the lncRNA HOTAIR expression level in the PB of AML patients was much higher than that in the healthy volunteers (P ＜ 0.05).Besides,the lncRNA HOTAIR expression level in the PB was significandy lower in the patierts with complete remission as compared with that pre-treatment (P＜ 0.05).In AML,the high level of lncRNA HOTAIR was correlated with higher white blood cell (WBC),lower hemoglobin (HGB) and platelet (PLT) counts (all P ＜ 0.05),but was not correlated with the age,gender,FAB subtypes,complete remission status,or the AML risk status (all P ＞ 0.05).The complete remission rate in the patients with high-HO-TAIR was much lower than that in the patients with low-HOTAIR (P =0.000) and the overall survival time in the patients with high-HOTAIR was much lower than that in the patients with low-HOTAIR (P =0.000).Conclusion The lncRNA HOTAIR in the PB of AML patients is highly expressed,and the changes in the expression may reflect the occurrence,development,chemotherapeutic effect and prognosis of AML.