Hey everyone, I was just diagnosed at the beginning of May 2012. At the time of dx, WBC was at 300k. Was immediately put on 600mg Gleevec, along with Hydroxurea for the first few days. As of my last blood draw, my WBC is back to within normal range. My onc is pretty happy with the progress. I think the Gleevec is doing a pretty good job....at least I hope it is. I do have a couple of questions that I hope you guys can help me out with.
1. My onc wants to put me on Tasigna, she feels that I would get a deeper response with it. I'm wondering though, that since it looks like I am getting a good response with Gleevec, if it would be worth changing? I like the idea of getting a deeper response, but right now the side effects with Gleevec aren't bothering me too bad. I'm worried that that would change with Tasigna. What do you guys think?
2. I need some help understanding my lab report. What does it mean the Report titled, "GenoTRACE BCR-ABL t(9,22) Detection by Quantitative RT-PCR" says:
Results: POSITIVE: Major breakpoint BCR-ABL transcript is detected at 29.335% on the international scale.
Notes: Quantitative PCR and capillary electrophoresis detect the presence of the major/p210 breakpoint (e13a2) BCR-ABL transcript.
Under the Clinical Utility section:
This quantitative real-time RT-PCR assay detects fusion transcripts resulting from breakpoints in various clustered regions of the BCR gene fused to the ABL gene: e13a2,e14a2(previous name b2a2,b3a2), the major breakpoint; e1a2, the minor breakpoint region; and e19a2, the micro breakpoint region. The presence of these breakpoints is characteristic of the reciprocal translocaiton between the long arms of chromosome 9 and chromosome 22 [t(9,22)] (Philadelphia chomosome)
If I am understanding this mumbo-jumbo, I believe this is one of the common types of CML?? But I don't understand the 29% number. Does that mean that of the cells they looked at, 29% of them contained this Philadelphia chromosome? Then is this a high high number?
Any help you can give is appreciated.
DJ