Immunophenotyping and cytogenetic profile of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia: A study from a tertiary care center from Kashmir.

Background The complete cytogenetic and immunophenotyping data in children suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in Jammu and Kashmir is scarce. To bridge this knowledge gap the present study proposes to evaluate the immunophenotype and cytogenetic profile of pediatric ALL patients treated in our hospital. Material and methods This hospital-based observational study was conducted on 180 pediatric patients aged between 1  to 18 years who had visited the Paediatric unit of the  Department of Medical Oncology at Sher-I -Kashmir Institute of Medical Science, Srinagar ,Jammu and Kashmir between the January 2015 to December 2019. Result Among the study participants, 57.8% were male and 42.2% were female with a mean age of 9.24 years and median of 8 Years. Among the participants, 57.2% were below 10 years of age and 42.8% were above 10years of age. CNS disease was reported in 7.8%  of the study participants.  63.3% patients  had a TLC count of less than 20000. Immunophenotyping data revealed pre-B ALL in 77.8% of children. Cytogenetic study was conducted on 153 patients among them 74.4% had a normal karyotype, 7.2% s had hyperdiploidy and 3.3% had hypodiploidy. The FISH analysis showed that 23.3% of study participants were positive for the TEL-AML study, 11.1% were positive for BCR-ABL analysis and 4.4% of participants were positive for MLL gene analysis. The overall survival in the study population was 78.9% among the study participants. Only the MLL gene rearrangement analysis showed a statistically significant correlation with the survival analysis (P<0.5). Conclusion In summary, the present study reported the complete cytogenetic and immunophenotyping profile of the children suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia in Jammu and Kashmir.