Study Of The Mechanism Of Pediatric Aplastic Anemia By Determining Expression Of Stem Cell Factor And Its Receptor

Backgroud and Objective: Aplastic anemia ( AA ) is a rare bone marrow (BM) disorder characterized by an unexplained failure of hematopoietic precursors to proliferate. It has a high occurrence in children. With the development of the technology of molecular biology and immunobiology, Some investigators found that hematopoietic growth factors play an important role in the mechanism of aplastic anemia, Among them, stem cell factor (SCF) and its receptor (c-kit) were most important. SCF is the ligand for the dimeric c-kit tyrosine kinase receptor. Binding of SCF to c-kit is crucial element in the developmental stimulus of late stem cells and early progenitor cells. In the erythroid lineage the SCF stimulus is important not only for proliferation and differentiation, but is also known to enhanced later haemoglobin production. There have been no reports about the mechanism of pediatric aplastic anemia by determining expression of stem cell factor and its receptor in our country up to now. The present study investigated the expression of stem cell factor and its receptor in order to study of the mechanism of pediatric aplastic anemia.Meterials and methods:The cases include 21 children with SAA, 38 children with CAA, Clinical data are collected perspectively. 51 children with non-hematopoietic disease are selected as the controls, the expression of stem cell factor and its receptor investigated bymeans of immunocytochemical and in situ hybridization methods. x2test was used toanalyse the data. There is a statistical significance when P value is less than 0.05.Results: (1) The positive rate of c-kit protein of expression of pediatric aplastic anemia 23.72% was not significantly higher than that of controls 23.52% (P>0.05 ) .(2) The positive rate of c-kit mRNA expression of pediatric aplastic anemia 30.50% was not significantly higher than that of controls 29.41% (P>0.05) .(3) There were not significant correlation between the positive rate of c-kit protein of expression of pediatric aplastic anemia and the age, gender of children and the type.(4) The positive rate of SCF protein of expression of pediatric aplastic anemia 22.03% was significantly lower than that of controls 41.17% (P<0.05) .(5) The positive rate of SCF mRNA expression of pediatric aplastic anemia 23.72% was significantly lower than that of controls 43.13% (P<0.05) .(6) There were not significant correlation between the positive rate of SCF protein of expression of pediatric aplastic anemia and the age, gender of children, but the positive rate of SCF protein of expression of aplastic anemia in SAA was significantly lower than that in CAA (P<0.05) .Conclutions: (1) SCF may be considered as one of the possible mechanisms of pediatric aplastic anemia.(2) C-kit receptor may be have no significant association with mechanisms of pediatric aplastic anemia, but its structure and founction need to be studied further.(3) SCF may be of therapeutic value in children with aplastic anemia.