The significance of antigen abnormal expression with immunophenotyping in acute lymphoblastic leukemia by flow cytometry

Objective To study the significance of antigen abnormal expression with immunophenotyping in acute lymphoblastic leukemia(ALL). Methods Immunophenotyping was detected in 76 prime patients with acute leukemia by pluri-parameter flow cytometry (FCM). Results There were 70 patients with B-ALL and 6 patients with T-ALL in 76 ALL patients. Among 70 B-ALL patients, 75.5% were CD45- or CD45±expression, and showing heterogenous B-ALL cells; 60% of patients were CD38 low expression; 40% of patients were CD10 high expression. For myeloid antigens, CD33 was the hightest to 25.7%, and CD13 was up to 24.2%, but CD15 and CD11b were uncommon, the positive rates were 5.7% and 1.4% respectively. Conclusions The antigen abnormal expression in ALL with multi-parameter immunophenotyping can be not only useful for leukemic clone, gating and quantitative leukemic cells, also able to detect MRD after morphology remission, so it offers an important method for detecting leukemia recurrence.