Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria with copy number-neutral 6pLOH in GPI (+) but not in GPI (-) granulocytes.

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) is an acquired bone marrow disorder caused by expansion of a clone of hematopoietic cells lacking glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored membrane proteins. Multiple lines of evidence suggest immune attack on normal hematopoietic stem cells provides a selective growth advantage to PNH clones. Recently, frequent loss of HLA alleles associated with copy number-neutral loss of heterozygosity in chromosome 6p (CN-6pLOH) in aplastic anemia (AA) patients was reported, suggesting that AA hematopoiesis 'escaped' from immune attack by loss of HLA alleles. We report here the first case of CN-6pLOH in a Japanese PNH patient only in GPI-anchored protein positive (59%) granulocytes, but not in GPI-anchored protein negative (41%) granulocytes. CN-6pLOH resulted in loss of the alleles A*02:06-DRB1*15:01-DQB1*06:02, which have been reported to be dominant in Japanese PNH patients. Our patient had maintained nearly normal blood count for several years. Our case supports the hypothesis that a hostile immune environment drives selection of resistant hematopoietic cell clones and indicates that clonal evolution may occur also in normal phenotype (non-PNH) cells in some cases.