Wilms Tumor 1 rs16754 predicts favorable clinical outcomes for acute myeloid leukemia patients in South Chinese population

The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs16754 in WT1 shows a clinical implication in Caucasus population. However, the results were not reproducible in different population cohorts. We evaluated the clinical significance of rs16754 for 205 de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients in South Chinese population, 188 healthy volunteers were recruited as healthy controls. WT1 mRNA expression was investigated in 81 pretreatment bone marrow specimens. WT1GA/AA patients showed better overall survival (OS, P = 0.006) and relapse-free survival (RFS, P = 0.025) as compared with WT1GG patients, and the favorable clinical outcomes were most prominent in older patients with superior OS (P = 0.001) and RFS (P = 0.003). In multivariable analysis, rs16754 was still associated with favorable OS (HR = 1.533, P = 0.042). The WT1GG patients showed significantly higher WT1 mRNA expression than the WT1GA/AA patients (P = 0.01). In summary, WT1 rs16754 may serve as an independent biomarker in AML patients from South Chinese.