Genetic screening for CLL premature, speaker says

“These are individuals who have lymphocytosis,” Dr Slager said. “They come to your clinic and have an elevated blood cell count, flow cytometry. [So] you screen them for MBL, and these individuals who have more than 500 cells per microliter, they are the ones who progress to CLL, at 1% per year.”

Individuals who don’t have the elevated blood counts do have the clonal cells, Dr Slager noted.

“They just don’t have the expansion,” she said. “The progression of these individuals to CLL is still yet to be determined.”

For these reasons, Dr Slager believes “it’s still premature to bring genetic testing into clinical practice.”

Future directions include bringing together the non-environmental issues and the inherited issues to create a model that will accurately predict the risk of CLL.