Still learning

[Dakota10]

I am new to CLL, have been reading posts a lot, and have a question.

What is “mutated “ and “unmutated”?

I see everyone talking about it a lot and I don’t know what it is

[Ernest2]

Hi Dakota,

I'll have to leave this technical question to those that understand and can also explain these things.

Its to do with your IgHv (that used to be called IgVh).

The funny thing is that mutated is good, and if you are fully mutated you are more likely to go a long time to treatment from diagnosis and also a long time from that 1st treatment to relapse one fine day.

Traditionally there haven't been fully reliable tests for it (so some of us don't know their status).

Thanks for asking this key question.

Best wishes,

Ernest

[lankisterguy Volunteer]

Hi Dakota10,

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Here is a video of Dr. Jennifer Brown explaining the difference.

youtube.com/watch?v=ar7m8KA...(Not working as expected?)

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I have heard Dr. Furman explain that when the millions or billions of B-lymphocytes are born in your bone marrow each day, they move into your blood stream and are like young elementary school children - (UnMutated).

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Eventually they migrate into your lymph nodes and go through a maturation process like puberty and become teenagers (Mutated) that allows them to later grow into adults that can detect and react to specific diseases.

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Since either of these cell types can become cancerous and start making CLL cells before they are full adults, they don't perform any useful work, but occupy space and consume resources. (I once had teenagers in my home like that).

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Lots of research data indicates that the typical Mutated CLL cell doesn't grow as fast as the typical UnMutated CLL cell, both before and after treatments.

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Len

[Newdawn Administrator in reply to lankisterguy]

Good analogy Len! 😉

Newdawn

[Dakota10 in reply to lankisterguy]

Ty so much!

[keeptalking]

Thank you Dakota10 for asking this question. I too kept reading it and didn’t have a clue what it meant. The video link sent by Lankisterguy was so helpful. I guess the thing to do is to keep asking questions. Thanks you.