Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor gene polymorphisms in patients with leukemia: possible association with susceptibility to the disease.

Accumulating evidences suggest that killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) contribute to the pathogenesis of diverse kinds of diseases. However, the functions and effects of KIR gene polymorphisms in the development of diseases remain largely unknown, especially about the activating KIR genes. To investigate the association of KIR gene polymorphisms with subtypes of leukemia, we carried out the present study on 263 patients with leukemia and 239 healthy controls by means of polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific primer and analysis, and then all data were analyzed by Logistic regression method. Our results showed that the frame genotypes of KIR2DL4, 3DL2, 3DL3 and 3DP1 were expressed in all patients and all controls. The genotypes of KIR2DL1, 2DL3, 3DL1, and 2DP1 were most prevalent genotypes whose rates were more than 95% in all patients and all controls. The rate of activating KIR2DS4 was much higher in patients with CML than that in healthy controls (P<0.001) while the activating KIR2DS3 was lower in patients with ALL compared with healthy controls (P<0.05). There was no significant change of KIR genes found in patients with NALL. In conclusion, this study suggests that the activating KIR2DS4 may serve as CML susceptive gene to trigger leukemia development, while KIR2DS3 is possibly a protect gene of ALL. Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.