Utility of a Fluorescence Microscopy Imaging System for Analyzing the DNA Ploidy of Pathological Megakaryocytes Including 5q-Syndrome

To investigate megakaryocyte (MK) DNA ploidy in various hematological diseases, fluorescence microscopy imaging system (FMI) can be used to analyze DNA ploidy with cell morphology at the single-cell level by using specialized image-processing software. Here we compared DNA ploidy obtained by FMI measured with that obtained flow cytometry (FCM). With FMI, we could evaluate the DNA ploidy in long-term preserved bone marrow smear samples after staining. We next analyzed the MK DNA ploidy in 42 bone marrow smear samples including 26 myeloid neoplasm cases, and we compared the DNA ploidy and platelet counts in the patients' peripheral blood; the production of platelets was significantly high compared to DNA ploidy in the myeloproliferative neoplasms group. The FMI method revealed that the patients with 5q- syndrome exhibited relatively low DNA ploidy despite high platelet counts, and this result suggested that increased DNA ploidy is not indispensable to abundant platelet production. The FMI method for DNA ploidy will be a useful tool to clarify the relationship between DNA ploidy and platelet production by MKs.