Clinical Significance of the Expression of P-glycoprotein and Bcl-2 Protein in Acute Leukemia

Objective To investigate the clinical significance of the expression of p-glycoprotein(p-gp) and bcl-2 protein in acute leukemia (AL).Methods The expression ratios of p gp and bcl-2 in bone marrow cells from 97 patients with AL were detected by flow cytometry.Results The expression of p-gp was higher in patients with refractory/relapsed AML than that of untreated patients with AML.The positive percentage of bcl-2 on refractory/relapsed ALL was higher than that at the untreated patients.The higher expression of p-gp and bcl-2 were observed in M 4 and M 5 subtype of AML.However,the expression percentage of p-gp and bcl-2 was lower in M 3 subtype.The CR rate in patients with p-gp+ was lower than that in patients with p-gp-.There was no significant difference in the CR rate between patients with bcl-2 + and those with bcl-2.The early relapse rates of patients with p-gp+ and bcl-2 + were higher than that of patients with p-gp-and bcl-2 -.Compared with patients with p-gp-/bcl-2 -,the p-gp+/blc-2 were characteristic of lower CR rate and higher early relapse rate.There were no correlation between p-gp and blc-2.Conclusion Overexpression of bcl-2 or p-gp could result in poor prognosis of AL.The measurement of p-gp combined with bcl-2 may be more valuable to evaluate the prognosis of acute leukemia.