الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is the most common human leukemia. This disease can arise in two forms, aggressive and indolent, both characterized by the accumulation of incompetent CD5+ B lymphocytes. CLL is characterized by clonal expansion of CD5+B cells in blood, marrow, and second lymphoid tissues. chromosomal alterations are detected in > 80% of cases and can discriminate patients with different outcomes.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs): represent a class of small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) of 19–25 nucleotide (nt) length, which post-transcriptionally regulate protein expression, impacting on key cellular functions. MiRNAs control numerous cellular/molecular processes such as apoptosis, cell proliferation and differentiation. Deregulated expression of miRNAs contributes to the initiation or development of numerous diseases such as cancer.
One of these microRNAs is miR-192 which has been suggested to be a positive regulator of p53 (a tumor suppressor marker) and its expression is deregulated in biological samples of cancer patients.
Our study aimed to evaluate miRNA-192 as a prognostic biomarker in CLL patients, correlate miRNA-192 expression levels to p53 gene in CLL and find out the association between miRNA-192 and p53 genes expressions and prognostic criteria of CLL.
Forty patients of newly diagnosed CLL were included in the study in addition to ten healthy subjects. CLL patients in remission or relapse stage or associated with other malignancy whether denovo or as a complication to CLL were excluded. Quantitation of plasma miR-192 and P53 expression levels were done by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction.
Our results showed a significant statistical association between poor patients’ outcome and advanced clinical Rai staging together with unfavorable cytogenetic profile. Moreover, significant statistical association was also observed in patients with poor outcome expressing low levels of miRNA-192 and increased levels of P53. miRNA-192 expression levels in our work were significantly lower in patients with lymphadenopathy and in patients with unfavorable cytogenetic profile. However, it was significantly higher among patients with good prognosis in comparison to patients with worse one.
In conclusion, miRNA-192 expression levels were significantly correlated with some standard prognostic factors as TLC, Hb, platelets, P53 expression level and favorable cytogenetic profile. These results indicated that circulating miR-192 can serve as non-invasive biomarker that can be used for predicting prognosis and monitoring of therapy in CLL patients.