Combining metaphase cytogenetics with single nucleotide polymorphism arrays can improve the diagnostic yield and identify prognosis more precisely in myelodysplastic syndromes
Creators: name: Qin, Yao
name: Zhang, Hang
name: Feng, Lin
name: Wei, Haichen
name: Wu, Yuling
name: Jiang, Chaoran
name: Xu, Zhihong
name: Zhu, Huanling
name: Liu, Ting
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Molecular Biology
subject: Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified

description: Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) encompass a group of heterogeneous haematopoietic stem cell malignancies characterised by ineffective haematopoiesis, cytological aberrations, and a propensity for progression to acute myeloid leukaemia. Diagnosis and disease prognostic stratification are much based on genomic abnormalities. The traditional metaphase cytogenetics analysis (MC) can detect about 40–60% aberrations. Single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays (SNP-A) karyotyping can detect copy number variations with a higher resolution and has a unique advantage in detection of copy number neutral loss of heterozygosity (CN-LOH). Combining these two methods may improve the diagnostic efficiency and accuracy for MDS. We retrospectively analysed the data of 110 MDS patients diagnosed from January 2012 to December 2019 to compare the detection yield of chromosomal abnormalities by MC with by SNP-A, and the relationship between chromosomal abnormalities and prognosis. Our results showed that SNP-A improved the detection yield of chromosomal aberrations compared with MC (74.5 vs. 55.5%, <i>p</i> &lt; .001). In addition, the positive yield could be further improved by combining MC with SNP-A to 77.3%, compared with MC alone. Univariate analysis showed that age &gt;65 years, bone marrow blasts ≥5%, with acquired CN-LOH, new aberrations detected by SNP-A, TGA value &gt; the median (81.435 Mb), higher risk by IPSS-R-MC, higher risk by IPSS-R-SNP-A all had poorer prognosis. More critically, multivariable analysis showed that age &gt;65 years and higher risk by IPSS-R-SNP-A were independent predictors of inferior OS in MDS patients. The combination of MC and SNP-A based karyotyping can further improve the diagnostic yield and provide more precise prognostic stratification in MDS patients. However, SNP-A may not completely replace MC because of its inability to detect balanced translocation and to detect different clones. From a practical point of view, we recommend the concurrent use of SNP-A and MC in the initial karyotypic evaluation for MDS patients on diagnosis and prognosis stratification.KEY MESSAGESSNP-A based karyotyping can further improve the MDS diagnostic yield and provide more precise prognostic stratification in MDS patients.Acquired CN-LOH is a characteristic chromosomal aberration of MDS, which should be integrated to the diagnostic project of MDS.The concurrent use of SNP-A and MC in the initial karyotypic evaluation for MDS patients can be recommended. SNP-A based karyotyping can further improve the MDS diagnostic yield and provide more precise prognostic stratification in MDS patients. Acquired CN-LOH is a characteristic chromosomal aberration of MDS, which should be integrated to the diagnostic project of MDS. The concurrent use of SNP-A and MC in the initial karyotypic evaluation for MDS patients can be recommended.