ABSTRACT
An Australian cattle dog (case 1: 6-year-old castrated male) and a Shih-Tzu dog (case 2: 8-year-old castrated male) were referred to the Gyeongsang Animal Medical Center due to anorexia and depression. Physical examinations, complete blood counts, serum chemical analysis, radiography, ultrasonography, and bone marrow biopsy were performed. Upon physical examinations of cases 1 and 2, enlargement of superficial lymph nodes was not identified. Hematologic findings in these dogs included leukocytosis with severe lymphocytosis, anemia, and thrombocytopenia. Upon radiography, both dogs showed splenomegaly. Upon examination of a peripheral blood smear in case 1, immature lymphoid cells, featuring decreased nuclear chromatin condensation and nuclear pleomorphism, were present. Biopsy samples of the bone marrow in case 1 revealed hypercellularity as well as a large number of immature lymphoblastic cells similar in shape to cells in the peripheral blood. The characteristic morphological features of peripheral blood and bone marrow samples in case 2 were small lymphocytes. Thus, the dogs were tentatively diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), respectively. After diagnosis, the CLL patient was administered chlorambucil and prednisolone therapy. Due to its similarity to human leukemia, the canine leukemia model provides a valuable model for research into human leukemia.
Subject(s)
Animals , Cattle , Child , Dogs , Humans , Anemia , Anorexia , Biopsy , Blood Cell Count , Bone Marrow , Chlorambucil , Chromatin , Depression , Diagnosis , Leukemia , Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell , Leukocytosis , Lymph Nodes , Lymphocytes , Lymphocytosis , Lymphoma , Physical Examination , Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma , Prednisolone , Radiography , Splenomegaly , Thrombocytopenia , UltrasonographyABSTRACT
Patients with Bloom syndrome (BS) show an immunodeficiency, an enhanced sister chromatid exchanges (SCEs), a strong genetic instability and an increased predisposition to all. In order to investigate the differential expression of BLM protein in hematopoietic tumor cell strains and study the effects of BLM gene on ultraviolet (UV)- or hydroxyurea (HU)-induced apoptosis, Western blot was used to detect the expression of BLM protein in normal human bone marrow mononuclear cells and 4 kinds of hematopoietic tumor cell strains. The 4 kinds of hematopoietic tumor cells were exposed to UV light with a germicidal UV lamp or treated with 2 mmol/L hydroxyurea and the apoptotic rate was detected by using AnnexinV-FITC. The results showed that these tumor cells ex- pressed BLM protein higher than the normal human bone marrow mononuclear cells (P＜0.01). In the 4 hematopoietic tumor cells, BLM protein was all specially cleaved in response to UV- or HU-induced apoptosis. The increase of BLM protein expression may play an important role in the evelopment of these tumors, and BLM proteolysis is likely to be a general feature of the apoptotic esponse.