In the present study, we assessed by FISH whether exposure to low concentrations (0.1 μm, 72 hours) of permethrin and malathion induce aberrations in KMT2A and IGH genes, which are involved in the etiology of leukemia and lymphoma.
We identified a novel t(10;14)(p12;q32)/IGH-BMI1 rearrangement and its IGL variant in six cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and found that these aberrations were consistently acquired at time of disease progression and high grade transformation of leukemia (Richter syndrome).
Molecular diagnostic laboratories face such difficulties with the BCL2-IGH translocation in follicular lymphoma and with internal tandem duplication mutation of the FLT3 gene in leukemia, where breakpoints are widely distributed, mutations may be multiple, signal strength is low, and background noise is elevated.
IGH rearrangements were backtracked in three RAS-positive patients (which were negative for KRAS mutation at birth) and found to be evident before birth, confirming a prenatal origin for the leukemia clone.
The PCR analysis of the IgH gene enabled us to obtain a CDR-III leukemia specific product in all cases, thereby providing a specific and diagnostic marker for each B-cell clone.