Clinical Significance of Serum CD155 Levels in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Patients

Background: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a hematologic malignancy characterized

by poor outcomes in adults. Traditional diagnostic and prognostic markers take into account

clinical data but also rely heavily on expensive and invasive tests such as bone marrow studies

with cytogenetics. CD155 is an adhesion molecule that also modulates immune response in

malignancy. Previous studies have shown that serum CD155 (sCD155) levels are higher in

patients with malignancies, and have demonstrated a correlation between higher levels of

sCD155 and poor outcomes. This study investigated the diagnostic and prognostic value of

sCD155 in adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Methodology: 32 adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and 15 control patients were

enrolled in this study. Clinical and outcome data were collected from patients and a blood sample

from patients and controls was collected with ELISA testing for sCD155 levels.

Results: sCD155 was found to be significantly higher in patients than controls (p<0.05) and was

significantly associated with bone marrow aspirate blast count. It was not associated with other

clinical parameters including gender, age, initial CBC parameter counts, presence of

lymphadenopathy, presence of CNS infiltration, presence of Philadelphia chromosome, type of

ALL, or risk stratification of ALL besides being associated with hepatosplenomegaly. ROC curve

showed high sensitivity and specificity of sCD155 and Kaplan Meir curve showed a trend

towards worse outcomes in patients with high sCD155 but it was not statistically significant.

Conclusion: sCD155 remains a promising marker for diagnosis of ALL but further studies are

needed to confirm its prognostic value.