Abstract:
Objective To explore the relationship between adipocytokine levels in bone marrow and the onset, progression, and prognosis of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).
Methods Retrospective analysis of adipocytokine levels in the bone marrow of 72 patients with MDS and 16 patients with MDS-related secondary acute myeloid leukemia (sAML), including adiponectin (ADP), leptin (LEP), visfatin/nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT), adipsin/complement factor D (CFD), and C1q/TNF-related protein 1 (CTRP1), detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) at The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Zhengzhou University from February 2020 to February 2022. High-throughput sequencing was used to detect MDS-related genes in 70 patients and the relationship between adipocytokines and the clinical characteristics, disease subtypes, mutant genes, and prognosis of patients were analyzed. Seventy-eight MDS-related genes were identified.
Results Clinical characteristics showed that ADP (P=0.027) and LEP (P=0.019) levels were significantly lower in men than inwomen; ADP (P=0.020), CFD (P<0.001), and NAMPT (P=0.021) levels were significantly lower in patients aged <65 years than in patients aged ≥65, whereas LEP levels were significantly higher (P=0.043). Adiponectin levels were significantly higher in patients with BMI<24 than in patients with BMI≥24 (P=0.025), whereas LEP levels were significantly lower (P=0.020); NAMPT levels were significantly higher in the group with increased blasts than in the group with no blasts (P=0.037).The CTRP1 levels were significantly higher in the MDS group than in the sAML group (P=0.010). Abnormal gene correlation analysis showed that elevated CTRP1 levels were positively correlated with the occurrence of epigenetically related abnormal genes (P=0.001) and were positively correlated with the occurrence of TET2 and U2AF1 (P<0.001 and P=0.036, respectively); ADP and CFD levels were positively correlated with the occurrence of NPM1 (P=0.048 and P=0.026, respectively). Multifactorial Cox proportional hazards regression model analysis showed that LEP <0.2 ng/mL was an independent risk factor for progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival in patients with MDS (P=0.002 and P<0.001, respectively), whereas NAMPT <2.1 ng/mL was a protective factor for PFS in patients with MDS (P=0.043).
Conclusions Adipocytokines in the bone marrow microenvironment are closely associated with the clinical characteristics, gene mutations, and prognosis of patients with MDS, with LEP <0.2 ng/mL being an independent prognostic risk factor and NAMPT <2.1 ng/mL being a prognostic protective factor.