Abstract
Background and Objectives
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common malignancy in childhood. The prevalence of ALL is 1 to 4/7 per 100,000 population every year world-wide. Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) are a group of non-coding RNAs involved in many biological processes, such as epigenetic changes, regulation of mRNA transcription and translation. Identification of their function can be helpful to understand the pathophysiology and treatment of ALL. One of the important LncRNAs in hematopoiesis regulation is HOTAIR (LncRNA HOX transcript antisense RNA). The purpose of this study was to determine the expression of HOTAIR LncRNA in newly diagnosed B-ALL patients.
 
Materials and Methods
In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 40 newly diagnosed B-ALL patients as well as 15 healthy individuals as control were given 1mL of bone marrow specimen with EDTA anticoagulant. RNA (patients and control) was extracted and Real-time quantitative PCR was used to examine the expression of LncRNA HOTAIR in ALL patients. The results was analyzed by REST 2009.
 
Results
The findings showed that expression of HOTAIR in patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia type B increased significantly as compared to healthy controls (p ˂ 0.05).
 
Conclusions 
In conclusion, the increase expression of HOTAIR in acute lymphoblastic leukemia can be attributed to potential role of LncRNA HOTAIR in pathophysiology of the disease.