New Diagnosis? Questions

[Tracibfine]

Hi All

Forgive me for the stupid question. I am newly diagnosed with CLL (?) I have a Flow Symmetry saying I have B-Cell CLL. Looked online at my just-in results from the FISH test that say: Negative

So...it's Friday night, I won't be able to speak to my Doctor for several days, and wondering if its possible to have CLL with Negative FISH results?

Your thoughts are appreciated while I have to wait for someone to explain this to me.

[AussieNeil Partner Founder Admin]

FISH testing only looks at the more common chromosomal abnormalities found with a CLL diagnosis. Confusingly, if none of these are found, you are often described as having a "Normal Karyotype". It's obviously not normal, because you have previously been diagnosed with CLL via that immunophenotype flow cytometry test, so there is some chromosomal damage that caused a healthy B-cell to become a CLL clone. It's just that you don't have 13q del, 11q del, 17p del, trisomy 12 or perhaps some other abnormalities checked for in the particular FISH panel used for your test.

Having a negative FISH test result tends to put you an intermediate risk category. It's not as good as being 13q del, but about the same as trisomy 12 (depending on other factors) and better than the other deletions.

Given you are in the USA, if you would like to know more about your likely time to treatment, you can ask for an IGHV mutation test, which assesses the CLL clone's stability. Strangely enough, mutated IGHV correlates strongly with a longer time to treatment. The test can be expensive depending on your insurance. If you have your flow cytometry results, a CD38 negative result also independently correlates with a lower risk category.

Neil

[Tracibfine in reply to AussieNeil]

Thanks so much!! Making it clearer until I talk to my Doctor. I really appreciate it.