General Medical Sciences
DNA helices Image courtesy of the National Institute of
New research suggests DNA methylation may be used to predict how children with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) will respond to treatment.
Researchers found they could divide patients into risk groups according to their methylation levels.
Patients with the highest methylation levels had the worst event-free survival, while patients who recovered spontaneously had methylation levels similar to those of healthy control subjects.
“This data provides important information that will help clinicians decide how intensively and swiftly to treat their patients,” said Mignon Loh, MD, of Benioff Children’s Hospital, University of California, San Francisco.
She and her colleagues described this research in Nature Communications.
The team studied genome-wide DNA methylation levels in an initial group of 39 patients with JMML and then validated the results in a group of 40 JMML patients.
Statistical analysis revealed that patients fell into 3 clusters with high, intermediate, or low levels of DNA methylation. And patients’ methylation levels were associated with 4-year event-free survival.
In the initial cohort, 6% (1/15) of patients in the lowest methylation group had an event at 4 years, as did 45% (5/11) of patients with intermediate levels of methylation and 61% (8/13) of patients with the highest levels of methylation.
In the validation cohort, 8% (1/12) of patients in the lowest methylation group had an event at 4 years, as did 36% (4/11) of patients with intermediate levels of methylation and 76% (13/17) of patients with the highest levels of methylation.
“For us, this was surprising,” said study author Elliot Stieglitz, MD, also of Benioff Children’s Hospital.
“We are not yet able to say why DNA methylation is different amongst these patients, but for it to be so predictive of outcomes, even more than genetic mutations, was a big surprise.”
The researchers also found that methylation levels might predict spontaneous remission as well.
Thirteen of the 14 patients who had spontaneous remission clustered together. And their DNA methylation levels were closer to those of healthy control subjects than those of other JMML cases.
“Because we have never been able to tell which patients might spontaneously recover, and because the disease can be so aggressive, the standard of care has been to recommend transplants for everybody,” Dr Stieglitz said.
“There are many health risks associated with bone marrow transplants, ranging from infections to long-term short stature and even death in some cases. To be able to avoid this intensive intervention for some patients based on a methylation assay would really be cutting-edge clinical science.”
