The impact of IDH and NAT2 gene polymorphisms in acute myeloid leukemia risk and overall survival in an Arab population: A case-control study

by Sohaib M. Al-Khatib, Obada Ababneh, Hassann Abushukair, Nour Abdo, Laith N. Al-Eitan

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a malignancy of the myeloid cells due to the clonal and malignant proliferation of blast cells. The etiology of AML is complex and involves environmental and genetic factors. Such genetic aberrations include FLT3, DNMT3, IDH1, IDH2, NAT2, and WT. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between five, not previously studied in any Arab population, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and the risk and overall survival of AML in Jordanian patients. The SNPs are NAT2 (rs1799930 and rs1799931), IDH1 (rs121913500), and IDH2 (rs121913502 and rs1057519736). A total number of 30 AML patients and 225 healthy controls were included in this study. Females comprised 50% (n = 15) and 65.3% (n = 147) of patients and controls, respectively. For AML patients (case group) Genomic DNA was extracted from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues and from peripheral blood samples for the control subjects group. Genotyping of the genetic polymorphisms was conducted using a sequencing protocol. Our study indicates that NAT2 rs1799930 SNP had a statistically significant difference in genotype frequency between cases and controls (p = 0.023) while IDH mutations did not correlate with the risk and survival of AML in the Jordanian population. These results were also similar in the TCGA-LAML cohorts with the notable exception of the rare NAT2 mutation. A larger cohort study is needed to further investigate our results.