Obejective: To investigate the expression level of suppressor of cytokine signaling SOCS3 mRNA in children's acute lymphoblastic leukemia(ALL); to analyze the relationship between the expresion level of SOCS3 mRNA and disease status and risks of ALL, and to explore the application of SOCS3 mRNA in evaluation of ALL disease status, risk and target therapy.

METHODSThe expression levels of SOCS3 mRNA in bone marrow mononuclear cells from 45 cases of newly diagnosed ALL at initial diganosis and induction remission and 13 normal children as controls were detected by SYBR Green fluorescence quantitative PCR; the correlation of SOCS3 mRNA expression level with risk and clinical characteristics of ALL was analyzed by means of statistical method; the immunofluorescence histochemistry method and laser confocal microscopy were used to detect the sites and expression level of SOCS3 mRNA in bone marrow samples of ALL patients.

RESULTSThe SOCS3 mRNA expression level at initial diagnosis of 45 ALL patients was significantly lower than that of normal controls (P<0.05), and that in induction remission of 45 patients was not significant different from normal controls (P<0.05); the SOCS3 mRNA expression level at initial diagnosis of patients with standasd and high risk was higher than that of patients with low risk (P<0.05). The 45 patients were divided into high expression and low expression groups according to SOCS3 mRNA expression level at initial diagnosis by median method, comparison of clinical characteristics in 2 groups was found that the SOCS3 mRNA high expression group had even more higher leukocyte count in peripheral blood, even more higher LDH level and much more poor prognostic genes; in addition, the high expression group showed more higher risk in comparison between 2 group.

CONCLUSIONThe SOCS3 mRNA expression is down-regulated at initial diagnosis, while recovered to normal level after induction remission of disease, thus the SOCS3 can be used as an indicator for evaluation of disease status. The high expression of SOCS3 mRNA up-regulates the disease risk, therefore the SOCS3 mRNA can be used as a factor for evaluation of ALL risk. The treatment of ALL via regulation of SOCS3 mRNA expression level maybe can become a new way. The regulation of SOCS3 mRNA expression level maybe can become a new way for treatment of ALL.