Table 3.

Prognostic impact of miR-124 methylation levels and haematological factors in patients with MDS

Variables	Overall survival (OS)				Leukaemia-free survival (LFS)
	No. of	No. of	Univariate	Multivariate	No. of	Univariate	Multivariate
	patients	event	P	P	event	P	P
Sex			0.326	–		0.513	–
Male	36	20			9
Female	20	14			6
Age			0.103	–		0.023	0.002
< 60	25	12			3
≥ 60	31	22			12
WBC (× 109/L)			0.932	–		0.313	–
≥ 4	13	8			2
< 4	43	26			13
Hb(g/dL)			0.058	–		0.050	–
≥ 10	9	4			0
< 10	47	30			15
PLT (× 109/L)			0.469	–		0.702	–
≥ 100	18	9			4
< 100	38	25			11
MCV(fL)			0.014	0.111		0.861	–
≥ 100	28	13			8
< 100	28	21			7
WHO classification			<0.001	0.016		0.003	0.944
SLD/RS-SLD/ MDS-U/5q-	10	5			0
MLD/RS-MLD	10	2			0
EB-1/EB-2	36	27			15
BM blast (%)			<0.001	0.003		<0.001	0.453
< 5	20	7			0
5–10	15	10			3
11–19	21	17			12
Cytopenias			0.391	–		0.19	–
0/1	11	5			1
2/3	45	29			14
Karyotype			0.005	<0.001		0.626	–
Good	34	18			9
Intermediate	7	5			2
Poor	14	11			4
IPSS			0.002	0.007		0.004	0.122
Low	4	1			0
Int-1	24	12			2
Int-2	19	14			10
High	8	7			3
miR-124-1 methylation			0.025	0.810		0.029	0.125
Low	33a,43b	17			9
High	23 a,13b	17			6
miR-124-2 methylation			0.004	0.312		0.001	0.307
Low	27	13			2
High	29	21			13
miR-124-3 methylation			0.010	0.028		0.069	-
Low	21	10			3
High	35	24			12

Different cut-off values of methylation levels were used to predict OS and LFS (Tables 1 and 2); therefore, ^ameans the number of patients with low or high methylation levels to predict OS, and ^bmeans the number of patients with low or high methylation levels to predict LFS

Italics are statistically significant