All:
I have read numerous conflicting things that say bone marrow is the gold seal for PCR, Kerotyping, and FISH testing. Then others I have read say that you can do all of it from peripheral blood once the marrow is clean (0%). I have also been told that you cannot compare PCR results that were done from PB from results of Bone Marrow? While other places say that you can. So now I have myself all confused. My primary oncologist says she does not trust results from PB and only makes decision from bone marrow which is making it difficult when I got recent results from PB that showed signifcant decrease. So far from PB my results have been the following.
11/09/10 - BCR-ABL Ratio 1.17
01/17/11 - BCR-ABL Ratio 0.51
04/15/11 - BCR-ABL Ratio 0.74
07/11/11 - BCR-ABL Ratio 0.082 (Latest result)
The big difference from April to July is that in June I switched to Tasigna from Gleevec. So I attribute the significant decrease to Tasigna.
I want to be happy about this but I am struggling with the fact this is from peripheral blood and not marrow.
Jen