2 replies to this topic

[LivingWellWithCML]

Hi,

Do you all get this on your CBCs?  I just noticed mine showed a small detectable result (00.02).  My body had finished fighting off an infection a week or so before the CBC blood draw, and my WBC levels were higher than usual (WBC 8.9, ANC 6.05).  Have any of you seen these types of elevations while maintaining a stable response on a TKI?  Does it take a little while for these levels to return to normal after fighting off an infection?  Seems that the anxiety of CML never goes away completely .....

[Trey]

That would be neutrophil blast count.  It will show up on some lab's reports when elevated, but yours is so low I don't know why it would even be listed.  Illnesses, infections, etc will cause more WBCs to be sent out of the marrow to fight them off, so it is not unusual if blasts get thrown out into the blood along with the more mature ones.  Neutrophils are the primary infection fighters so that makes sense that neutrophil blasts would be the ones reporting as elevated since you were fighting an infection.

Remember that blasts are not bad.  All WBCs go through the blast stage on their way to maturity.  Blasts are just immature so they cannot work very well.  But they are supposed to stay in the marrow until they mature, then exit to do their work in the blood and body.  If the blasts are leukemic, and there are large quantities of them, then that is what is not good. 

[LivingWellWithCML]

Maybe they showed it because they state the normal range as <= 0.00.  So ANY detectable result is an anomaly according to Emory.  Could it take a week or two for WBC/ANC to return to normal following an infection?  I just had a typical case of "the crud" at the beginning of the month for about 9 days or so, but I was all better about a week before the blood draw.  So I was really surprised to these this stuff still elevated.

Thanks for your input, Trey -