RESUMEN
The authors conducted a flow cytometry immunophenotyping study in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) from Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The patients (n = 126) were newly diagnosed using a panel of monoclonal antibodies: CD1a, CD2, CD3, CD4, CD7, CD8, CD10, CD13, CD33, CD14, CD19, CD22, CD79a, CD117, CD34, anti-IgM, anti-TdT, anti-HLA-Dr, and anti-human kappa and lambda light chains. Additional data, such as patients' age and gender, clinical and laboratory findings such as presence of tumor masses, lymphadenopathy, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, leukemic infiltration in the central nervous system (CNS) were also investigated. Results showed that 56.7% of the cases were B-lineage ALL and 55% were T-cell ALL. Also, we found that males were more affected by the disease, regardless of immunological classification. The correlation between age and immunological subtypes showed that the B-lineage ALL occurred more frequently in patients aged under 15 while the T-cell ALL subtype was more frequent in adults. Immunophenotypic profiles and morphological subtypes showed a direct correlation between L3 subtype and B-lineage ALL, while L1 and L2 subtypes correlated more often with B-cell lineage and T-cell ALL, respectively. Correlation analysis between immunophenotypic and clinical profiles showed that T-cell ALL was more associated with a higher incidence of lymphadenopathy, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly and CNS leukemic infiltration, also showing a greater blast cell count in peripheral blood than the other subgroups. The presented data suggest that immunophenotyping is an important method in the diagnosis, monitoring and prognostic assessment in determining the pathological mechanisms of evolution of ALL.