SummaryWe present a 4-year follow-up of a 42-yearold patient with primary thrombocythemia whose clinical course was complicated by two major mucocutaneous bleeding episodes. On both occasions an acquired functional yon Willebrand factor deficiency was demonstrated. In contrast to what is reported in the literature, an inverse relationship between platelet number and plasma high-molecular-weight multimers of von Willebrand factor was established.

adrenal gland tissue, 5 and microRNA-34b expression was reported to be decreased in non-small-cell lung cancers. 4 Here, we show for the first time that microRNA-34a is significantly downregulated in CLL patients with TP53 deletions compared with CLL patients without such deletions. In these cases, we were not able to reveal BCL2 as a target of microRNA34a. Still, BCL2 being only one of the microRNA-34a targets, a potential function of a regulatory circuit involving the important tumor suppressor TP53 and microRNA-34a in the pathogenesis of CLL cannot be excluded, and needs to be further investigated.

The isolation of high-quality RNA and DNA from various specimens is essential to perform reliable molecular diagnostic assays. In routine diagnostics of hematologic malignancies isolation of high-quality RNA is a prerequisite. We used QIAsymphony technology (QST) using a customized RNA CT 800 V6 protocol for automated semi-high-throughput isolation of RNA from human specimens and compared the results for breakpoint cluster region-c-abl oncogene 1 (BCR-ABL1) quantification by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RQ-PCR) and detection of JAK2 V617F mutations by reverse-transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) on QST RNA with RNA isolation performed with our routine manual method using RNA-Bee (RB). QST RNA was isolated with and without the addition of β-mercaptoethanol (BME). Addition of BME to the lysis buffer RLT Plus resulted in consistently lower Ct values in analyses of the reference gene porphobilinogen deaminase (PBGD). Further, the BCR-ABL1 mRNA levels of the QST RNA isolation were highly consistent with RB RNA isolation, only when the lysis buffer RLT Plus in addition contained BME. Moreover, cases of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) with low levels of JAK2 V617F mRNA were even missed in QST when lysis buffer RLT Plus was used, but they were readily detected after addition of BME.