Blood samples could prevent the risk of leukemia. This was stated in a recent research by the researchers of the University of Edinburgh and Glasgow who studied how changes in blood production could provide clues to the risk of developing leukemia depending on the type of mutation that occurs.
As we age, mutations in blood stem cells can mean that the altered cells can have a growth advantage over other blood cells and outperform them in what is called a fitness advantage. Leukemia is often the result of the disruption of the fine balance in the production of blood cells, where new cells are produced and old blood cells die.
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.
Blood Samples and Leukemia Prediction: Here’s what the new research revealed
Doctor Tamir Chandraa Chancellor of the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, said: “We measured changes in blood samples from 83 older individuals from the Lothian Birth Cohorts, taken every three years over a 12-year period. Thanks to the combined knowledge of mathematicians, biologists and genome scientists, we set out to understand what these changes mean related to the risk of developing leukemia as we age ”.
The Lothian Birth Cohorts 1921 and 1936 are longitudinal studies on brain, cognitive and general aging that followed every three years individuals aged 70 to 82 for the 1921 cohort and aged 79 to 92 for 1936. Starting from these blood samples , the team of researchers subsequently combined these complex genomic data with a machine learning algorithm to link different mutations with different growth rates of the blood stem cells carrying these mutations.
Thanks to this work, specific mutations have been revealed that offer distinct fitness benefits to stem cells measured in people without leukemia.This information can then be used to predict how quickly the mutated cells will grow, which determines the risk of leukemia.
It is important to specify that the researchers explained that more research is needed to validate these findings based on a blood sample drawn from 84 volunteers, in a larger population due to the limited sample size in the current study.
The doctor Kristina Kirschner, co-lead author and senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow Institute of Cancer Sciences, he has declared: “By knowing an individual patient’s risk of developing leukemia, doctors can schedule shorter intervals between appointments in those who are most likely to develop the disease and provide early treatment, which is most likely to be successful. “
Doctor Linus Schumacherco-lead author and member of the Chancellor at the Center for Regenerative Medicine of the University of Edinburgh, he has declared: “To understand the risk of leukemia, we need to consider the balance between the different cells involved in the production of blood cells and how this balance changes as we age. By linking genomic data with machine learning, we were able to predict the future behavior of blood cells based on the mutations they develop. “
Regarding the change of cells with advancing age, a research
Carried out by researchers from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Science in Japan, it reported differences in blood cell mutations between Japanese and European populations.. The study revealed that these preclinical mutations are strongly associated with different types of cancer and may explain why Europeans have higher rates of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, while Japanese have higher rates of T-cell leukemia.
Our blood cells are continually renewed by a stock of blood stem cells, called HSCs, located in the bone marrow. These stem cells produce progenitor cells which give rise to different types of blood cells. These include important lymph cells that make up our immune system, such as T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes.
Blood cells that come from the same stem or progenitor cell can be identified by looking at their DNA. For example, all T cells derived from a particular HSC are clones of each other. If the HSC had a mutation, the same mutation will exist in all T cells of that lineage, but not in other T cells that came from different HSCs.
Although these types of clonal mutations have been studied in European populations, Chikashi Terao and his team at the RIKEN IMS thought they could find slightly different results in their older Japanese population of nearly 180,000 individuals. Their results showed that clonal mutations occurred in over 35% of people in their 90s.
UK BioBank data yielded similar results, but the overall percentages were slightly lower: “Our results strongly suggest that chromosomal alterations in hematopoietic clones are an inevitable event in very old age.“, Declared Terao:”The higher percentage of mutations in the Japanese population is probably related to the average age of the sample “.
Closer comparisons, however, with the blood samples from which UK BioBank data were extracted revealed several differences. The researchers carefully studied all the mutations in the T cell lineages and found that over 80% of them occurred in the Japanese population. On the other hand, more than 90% of the B cell lineage mutations occurred in the European sample.
This information is consistent with the reported cases of leukemia. T-cell leukemia occurs 10 times more often in Japanese than in Europeans, while chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a B cell-related leukemia, is 5 times more common in Europeans. “This does not mean that the mutations selectively occurred in different genes depending on the population. Remember, the data includes only clonal mutations that have survived and replicated enough to be detectable“, Explained Terao.
Researchers also found genetic components linked to the risk of having clonal HSC mutations and identified several locations on chromosomes for which genetic variations were associated with an increased risk of clonal mutations in the blood sample in general, as well as three locations. related to specific mutations in B lymphocytes. This means that the likelihood or risk of having one of the critical mutations now or in the future can be estimated by looking for these variations in a person’s DNA.
Therefore, although clonal HSC mutations may be inevitable, we can still do something about it. “Not everyone with these mutations gets cancer”Terao specified: “However, simple blood samples that you can get at any regular health check will be able to identify people at risk for leukemia by checking for clonal HSC mutations. A DNA test based on blood samples can also identify those at high risk of developing critical HSC mutations in the future. “
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Nature.
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