Payam Siyadat - Department of Hematology, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Hossein Ayatollahi - Cancer Molecular Pathology Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
Mahmood Barati - Department of Biotechnology, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Maryam Sheikhi - Cancer Molecular Pathology Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
Minoo Shahidi - Department of Hematology, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Background: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a highly heterogeneous malignancy that accounts for nearly 75% of leukemias in children. While the exact mechanism of ALL is not fully understood, some genetic variants have been implicated as associated with ALL susceptibility. The association between some genetic variants in miRNA genes and ALL risk has been described previously. A previous study suggested that mir-612 rs12803915 G> A may be associated with pediatric ALL risk. High-resolution melting (HRM) analysis is a reliable method that can be applied for polymorphism detection. Methods: This retrospective study was performed on 100 B-ALL patients (52 males and 48 females; age 4.6 ± 3.2 years) and 105 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (48 males and 57 females; age 5.1 ± 3 years). We used HRM to identify mir-612 rs12803915 genotypes. Sanger sequencing was applied to validate the HRM results. Results: High resolution melting analysis was used to genotype the mir-612 rs12803915 polymorphism. We found no association between rs12803915 allele A and B-ALL risk in any inheritance models (p> 0.05). Conclusions: HRM is a suitable method to detect SNP rs12803915 in the mir-612 gene; however, we found no significant association between the rs12803915 polymorphism and ALL risk.

Childhood ALL, Hsa-mir-612, High-Resolution Melting (HRM), MicroRNA, Polymorphism.