RESUMO
BACKGROUND: B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) is a heterogeneous disease with a highly variable clinical course. Some patients may survive for years without need for therapy while others, although they had early treatment, the outcome is unsatisfactory. The motive to find more reliable prognostic factors apart from stage, age, tumor volume and immunoglobulin heavy chain mutations is of clinical interest. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study was carried out on 25 CLL patients attending Hematology Clinic at Ain Shams University Hospitals. Peripheral blood sample was taken from each patient for surface CD38 and cytoplasmic zeta-chain-associated protein tyrosine kinase (ZAP-70) by flow cytometry and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) expression by real time PCR. RESULTS: We demonstrated statistically significant association between high level of LPL expression and significantly high LDH level, poor cytogenetic risk, ZAP- 70 expression and response to therapy (p=0.01, 0.02, 0.04 and 0.001 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: LPL expression can serve as a new surrogate prognostic factor for CLL patients and can be used to detect patients who need early treatment. KEYWORDS: Lipoprotein lipase - ZAP-70 - Chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
