CCL blood work

[blairzy]

If you were diagnosed with CLL in June of 2015 with 40 x 1000 WBC. Your platelets at 154 x 100, then drop to a low of point of 98x100. Why after ten months would you, from 36.1 x1000 WBC to 23.7 WBC and you platelets go back up to 121 x 1000? I am very confused. Can someone help me out please

[Shepherd777]

Other medications like steroids can radically raise your WBC briefly as can infections and pain.

[blairzy in reply to Shepherd777]

Thank you Knotagoat, but I am wondering why after three years, where my WBC is basically in the thirties it goes down to 23.7,. It just seem strange to me that it would drop more than 12x1000 Points. Also that the platelets would go up so much. Plus I haven’t been taken any meds that are different than before.

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

You are looking at two, somewhat independent measures here, your lymphocyte count and your platelet count. Taking them in turn:

Your lymphocyte count is comprised of mainly CLL lymphocytes but also healthy B, T and NK lymphocytes. All of these can change over time, influenced by many factors, such as infections, vaccinations, drugs and diet, time of day, instrument calibration and repeatability and of course what's happening with your CLL.

Platelets are also affected by illnesses, drugs, diet, instrument calibration and repeatability (with platelets the hardest counts to measure on automatic testing equipment due to their natural propensity to clump together). They are also affected by your CLL - to the extent it is crowding out your bone marrow, increasing your spleen size (causing greater filtering and hence a shorter lifespan and a lower count), plus possibly an auto-immune factor ITP), which is more common in CLL.

That's why monitoring overall trends in your blood test results is most important and why it is advisable to always have your blood counts done at the same lab and to try and have them taken around the same time of the day, with a consistent routine beforehand. Taking those steps to minimise variability somewhat can help, but there will still be underlying natural variation, simply because of the dynamic nature of our bodies.

You might find these posts will help you understand some of the testing limitations:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Here's a post covering spreadsheets you can use to track your blood test results:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Neil

[Shepherd777]

They do fluctuate in that if you took the blood test even a couple of hours later or earlier it could be considerably different. Your body replaces your WBC every 10 days so the numbers are changing all the time. Over a period of a year my wife's wbc went from 22000 up to 37000 and back down to 25000. Also AussieNeil is correct in the other reasons he mentioned such as time of day, different labs, etc. Read the links he gave you. He is my mentor on this site.

[Jonquiljo]

He certainly knows his stuff!

[blairzy]

Thank you to all of you for your help. I really appreciate it.

[joed1rt]

My WBC dropped from 60 to 40 in a 6 month period. It happens.

[blairzy in reply to joed1rt]

Thank you, I had no idea that could happen before I joined this support group.