Expression Profiles of DNA Methylation and Demethylation Machinery Components in Pediatric Myelodysplastic Syndrome: Clinical Implications

The aim of this study was to analyse the expression profiles of (components of DNA methylation machinery), and (components of DNA demethylation machinery) in pediatric MDS patients and investigate their associations with MDS subtypes, cytogenetics, evolution to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and methylation level. The expressions of , and were evaluated in 39 pediatric MDS patients by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). The quantification of methylation levels (MtL) was performed in 20 pediatric MDS patients by pyrosequencing. Mann-Whitney test was used to evaluate possible differences between the expression levels of selected in patients and donors, according to MDS subtypes, karyotypes, evolution to AML and MtL. The correlations between the expression levels of the different genes were assessed by Spearman rank correlation coefficient. We found that s expression levels were higher in pediatric MDS compared to donors [ (p