The Impact of Leukemia on the Detection of Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Markers

Cureus. 2022 Nov 1;14(11):e30954. doi: 10.7759/cureus.30954. eCollection 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Introduction: Short tandem repeats (STRs) have been used for various identity typing methods worldwide. They have high discrimination power in human identification in forensics, paternity testing, missed personal identification, genetic diseases, and gene regulatory functions. They have also been used to detect and monitor the stability of diseases, including various types of cancer. This study aimed to investigate the impact of leukemia on the detection and stability of STR markers.

Methods: DNA was isolated from 30 participants (15 with chronic myeloid leukemia( CML) and 15 healthy controls) and used to amplify STR markers using specific primers.

Results: We found that the blood of those with leukemia had more 9.3 and 9 alleles at the tyrosine hydroxylase 1 (TH01) marker than the blood of the healthy control samples. The results of this study will help researchers understand leukemia's effect on the detection and stability of STR markers in leukemic patients compared to healthy individuals.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that STR markers could become useful in genetic studies of leukemia cases.

Keywords: dna typing; forensic dna analysis; leukemia; str markers; th01 marker.