Abstract: ObjectiveThis study was to investigate the expression and significance of miR-125a-3p in peripheral blood of Acute myeloid leukemia patients. MethodsReal-time fluorescent quantitative PCR was performed to detect the expression levels of miR-125a-3p in peripheral blood specimens of 119 AML patients, including 53 newly diagnosed, 12 relapsed and 54 treated patients. In addition, 12 healthy persons were selected as normal controls. Moreover, 7 persons were selected randomly from newly diagnosed patients for dynamic monitoring of miR-125a-3p levels in peripheral blood. ResultsCompared with normal controls, the expression levels of miR-125a-3p were decreased significantly in newly diagnosed and relapsed patients (P<0.05). However, miR-125a-3p expression in treated patients were increased (P> 0.05). The researchers compared respectively the expression levels of miR-125a-3p in different FAB subtypes of newly diagnosed and treated patients and found that there were no significant differences among various subtypes in newly diagnosed patients (P>0.05). In treated patients, the expression of miR-125a-3p in M4 patients was significantly higher than it in M0 (P<0.05), however, the differences between other subtype patients were not significant (P>0.05). Dynamic monitoring of miR-125a-3p levels of 7 patients showed that miR-25a-3p expression maintained a higher level in the process of the treatment; when one patient with remission relapsed after 4~5 courses of treatment, miR-125a-3p expression reduced again. ConclusionThe expression of miR-125a-3p is obviously decreased in patients with newly diagnosed and relapsed AML, and chemotherapy arises the expression level, which may be related with the occurrence and development of AML. Thus miR-125a-3p is expected to become a biological marker of AMLin evaluating for therapy efficacy and monitoring.

Key words: miR-125a-3p, Acute, myeloid, leukemia, Real-time, fluorescence, quantitative, PCR, Dynamic, monitoring, Biological, marker