ABSTRACT
Bariatric surgery (BS) is an effective intervention for severe obesity and associated comorbidities. Although several studies have addressed the clinical and metabolic effects of BS, an integrative analysis of the complex body response to surgery is still lacking. We conducted a longitudinal data study with 36 patients with severe obesity who were tested before, 6 and 12 months after restrictive BS for more than one hundred blood biomarkers, including clinical, oxidative stress and metabolic markers, peptide mediators and red blood cell membrane lipids. By using a synthetic data-driven modeling based on principal component and correlation analyses, we provided evidence that, besides the early, well-known glucose metabolism- and weight loss-associated beneficial effects of BS, a tardive, weight-independent increase of the hepatic cholesterol metabolism occurs that is associated with potentially detrimental inflammatory and metabolic effects. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that oxidative stress is the most predictive feature of the BS-induced changes of both glucose and lipids metabolism. Our results show the power of multi-level correlation analysis to uncover the network of biological pathways affected by BS. This approach highlighted potential health risks of restrictive BS that are disregarded with the current practice to use weight loss as surrogate of BS success.
Subject(s)
Bariatric Surgery , Obesity, Morbid , Humans , Bariatric Surgery/methods , Weight Loss/physiology , Weight Gain , Risk AssessmentABSTRACT
FLT3 internal tandem duplication (ITD) mutations are frequently detected at diagnosis in cytogenetically normal acute myeloid leukaemia (CN-AML) and predict unfavourable outcome. FLT3 ITD is an unstable aberration and may be lost or acquired at relapse. Recent whole genome sequencing studies have suggested that FLT3 ITD(+)ve AML relapse may evolve from small subclones undetectable at diagnosis by routine polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We developed a patient-specific real-time quantitative-PCR (RQ-PCR) to implement FLT3 ITD detection in six AML patients whose blasts carried wild-type FLT3 at diagnosis and who relapsed with FLT3 ITD by routine PCR. Patient-specific forward primers were designed after cloning and sequencing the FLT3 ITD in each case. The assay allowed retrospective detection of FLT3 ITD in diagnostic samples of 4/6 cases and to establish the kinetics of clonal evolution preceding relapse. After conventional chemotherapy, all patients had early relapse despite having been classified as NPM1(+)ve/FLT3 ITD(-)ve at presentation, with shorter remissions being observed in four patients re-classified as FLT3 ITD(+)ve by the new assay. Notably, FLT3 ITD clone became detectable by conventional PCR in three patients tested during remission after initial treatment. Our data underscore the need of identifying low FLT3 ITD levels, which are probably associated with relapse in otherwise good prognosis CN-AML.
Subject(s)
Gene Duplication , Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute/genetics , Mutation , Nuclear Proteins/genetics , fms-Like Tyrosine Kinase 3/genetics , Adult , Female , Gene Dosage , Humans , Induction Chemotherapy , Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute/drug therapy , Male , Middle Aged , Nucleophosmin , Recurrence , Retrospective StudiesABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: MicroRNA have a central role in normal haematopoiesis and are deregulated in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). The purpose of the study was to investigate by qRT-PCR the expression of miRNAs involved in myeloid differentiation (miR-424, miR-155, miR-223, miR-17-5p) in 48 patients with cytogenetically normal AML well characterized for NPM1 and/or FLT3 mutations. Three types of normalization were used for the data validation. FINDINGS: We found that miR-424 was down-modulated in AMLs with NPM1mutA regardless of FLT3 status. On the contrary, miR-155 showed up-regulation in patients with FLT3 internal tandem duplications (ITD) with or without NPM1 mutations. No significant associations were found by analyzing miR-223 and miR-17-5p in relation to FLT3 and NPM1 status. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports the view that major genetic subsets of CN-AML are associated with distinct miRNA signatures and suggests that miR-424 and miR-155 deregulation is involved in the pathogenesis of CN-AML with NPM1 and FLT3-ITD mutations, respectively.
