Autonomous proliferation and bcl-2 expression involving haematopoietic cells in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome

In this work, we investigated the autonomous proliferation, bcl-2 expression and number of apoptotic cells in the bone marrow of patients with confirmed diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Normal bone marrow cells obtained from donors of the Clinical Hospital of this university were used as a control. The autonomous proliferation, evaluated by clonal culture without exogenous growth factor, and the number of apoptotic cells in bone marrow kept for 10 days in liquid cultures at 37 degrees C and 5% carbon dioxide, were significantly greater in MDS patients than in control subjects (P = 0.001, Wilcoxon). However, bcl-2 expression, measured by immunocytochemistry, was significantly lower in MDS patients than in normal individuals (P = 0.002, Wilcoxon). These results suggest that the high proliferation activity in MDS patients may be counteracted by the high level of medullar cell death, which might be related to the lower bcl-2 expression.