Evaluation of TAX ,HBZand BCL-XL Gene Expression in Adult T cell Leukemia/Lymphoma (ATL) and HealthyCarriers.

HTLV-I is a worldwide distribution retrovirus with 10-20 million infected individuals. Northeast of Iran especially Mashhad is one of the endemic areas. In spite of the healthy carriersare the majority of HTLV-I-infected individuals but small proportion of infected populationdeveloped two progressive diseases: ATL and HAM/TSP. ATLL is an Adult T Cell leukaemialymphoma caused by the aggressive T-cell proliferation that infected by HTLV-1 and isassociated with a very poor prognosis. BCL-XL belongs to BCL2 family which inhibitsapoptosis in cell so over express of this gene may promote the uncontrolled cell proliferation.TAX and HBZ are two major oncoprotein which they are the main cause of malignancy whichmay interrupt in apoptosis, therefore in this study co expression of TAX, HBZ and BLC-XLwere evaluated. In this study, 37 HTLV-I infected individuals including 17 asymptomatic 20ATL subjects were investigated. mRNA were extracted and convert to CDNA from Peripheralblood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) then expression of TAX,HBZ and BCL-XL investigated byTaqMan qPCR. The analysis of data showed a significant difference in mean of TAX andHBZ expression among study groups (ATL and carriers P= (0.003) and P= (0.000)respectively, Inspite of BCL-Xl elevated gene expression it seems no difference betweenstudies groups (P=0.323).The present study demonstrated that TAX and HBZ were higher inATL group in comparison with healthy carriers. With the regard to BCl-XL gene expressionresults it’s suggested this anti apoptotic pathway might not be involved in malignancy;Therefore, TAX and HBZ can be used as prognostic and monitoring marker for the efficiencyof therapeutic regime and prognosis of HTLV-I associated malignancy.

Keywords:

ATLL , HTLV-I , TAX , HBZ , BCL-XL