Korean J Hematol.  1997 May;32(1):86-97.

Expression Patterns of Immunologic Surface Markers in Acute Leukemia

• Choi HS
• Kim KY
• Lee JW
• Suh JS
• Lee WK
• Kim JS
• Jean DS

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Immunophenotyping is an important technique for the diagnosis and classification of acute leukemia, as well as French-American-British (FAB) classification on the basis of morphologic characteristics and cytochemistry. We evaluated the expression patterns of immunologic surface markers in acute leukemia.
METHODS
Peripheral or bone marrow leukemic cells from 75 leukemic patients (acute lymphoblastic leukemia, ALL 40 cases; children (26 cases), adults (14 cases) and acute myeloid leukemia, AML 35 cases; children (9 cases), adults (26 cases)) were studied. Monoclonal antibodies which were designed for two color direct immunofluorescence (IF) analysis with combination of fluoresceinisothiocynate (FITC) and phycoerythrin (PE) conjugated, CD10/CD19, CD20/CD5, CD3/CD22, CD7/CD33, HLA-DR/CD13 (Acute Leukemia Phenotyping Kit, Becton Dickinson; BD, USA) were analyzed by flow cytometry.
RESULTS
Blasts from these patients could be classified as CALLA (+)B-ALL (26 cases, 65.0%), CALLA (-)B-ALL (6 cases, 15.0%), T-ALL (6 cases, 15.0%), biphenotypic ALL (2 cases, 5.0%). The positive expression rates were CD19 (100%), CD10 (78.1%), CD22 (75.0%) and CD20 (50.0%) in B-ALL, CD7 (100%), CD3 (50.0%) and CD5 (50.0%) in T-ALL and CD33 (85.7%), CD13 (74.3%) in AML, respectively. The incidence of acute mixed lineage leukemia (AMLL) was 26.7% and leukocytosis, anemia and thrombocytopenia were frequently seen in AMLL.
CONCLUSION
By the study of immunophenotyping we could more exactly diagnosed ALL and AML, as well as AMLL which was not exactly diagnosed by characteristics of morphology and cytochemistry only. Therefore the best method for the diagnosis of acute leukemia will be achieved by using of immunophenotyping and FAB classification on the basis of morphology and cytochemistry.

Keyword

Acute leukemia; FAB; Immunophenotyping; Acute mixed-lineage leukemia

MeSH Terms

Adult
Anemia
Antibodies, Monoclonal
Antigens, Surface*
Bone Marrow
Child
Classification
Diagnosis
Flow Cytometry
Fluorescent Antibody Technique, Direct
Histocytochemistry
Humans
Immunophenotyping
Incidence
Leukemia*
Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute
Leukocytosis
Phycoerythrin
Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma
Precursor T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma
Thrombocytopenia
Antibodies, Monoclonal
Antigens, Surface
Phycoerythrin