Hello, first time posting. I’m a mid 50’s female diagnosed in 2022. I’m on W&W for now and feeling physically good. I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced a near doubling in white blood cell count in less than six months with a severe upper respiratory infection? Did it come back down? If so, how long did it take? My WBCs went from about 16,000 to 28,000 over 4 months and about 10 days after a severe upper respiratory infection. It’s been six weeks and it seems to be hanging out around 28,000. I did do high dose IV Vitamin C (every other week for 5 days at 25, 50 and 75 gm) once the near doubling occurred. I was hoping my WBC could be attributed to my cold and would have dropped. Anyone else have this experience or some insight into it? I do have a scheduled follow up with my hematologist, but just haven’t found them to be very helpful.
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Insanity4578
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Hello Insanity, I can take a lay person guess at this. I am not sure of this, but my understanding is that infections can cause some temporary and mostly slight variations with our wbc and included lymphocyte counts. A somewhat sustained 28k wbc count seems more cll related to me than to elevated wbc from a bad cold.
That said, I would not draw too many conclusions about lymphocyte doubling time based on a couple test results, particularly since you write that the 28k has been stable a few weeks.
My wbc has fluctuated wildly at times, up 20k one week and down 20k the next. But a clear pattern did eventually develop. I hung around between 50k and 100k for a year or so and then suddenly was at 200 k. It might take other people years to get to just 100k.
With the limited info you have provided on your wbc, I think most answers you get on here will be educated guesses and anecdotal stories, like my answer. Your labs over the next six months or a year should reveal for you if your lymphocytes are relatively stable or doubling. The fact they went from 16k to 28k in a short time is cause for concern. But it seems very plausible that your infection contributed to the bump, or some unexplained outlier lab result we can get from time to time.
I suspect your doctor will repeat labs and perhaps watch you more closely. More times than not, but not always, our cll markers will move in tandem as our cll worsens. My platelets and hemoglobin numbers both fell as my wbc doubled. If your hemoglobin and platelets have been stable over the same period of time your lymphocytes bounced up, that might argue against the bump in your wbc being an indication that your cll is on the move.
I hope you get more clarification from your doctor. If everything else is stable, I assume your doc just continue your labs to see if the bump to 28k is evidence of a trend towards doubling time or an outlier lab result whose cause might not ever be known.
It's to be expected that illnesses can boost our white blood cells, as they are our defense against them in our blood and tissues once they get past our defences. Our glands (nodes) swell when we have infections, due to the proliferation of B and T lymphocytes in the node germinal centres, trying to find cells with matching receptors, to the virus in this case. When lymphocytes with non-matching receptors don't get stimulated by antigens from or epitopes on the invading bugs, they undergo apoptosis and our nodes shrink back to normal. Lymphocytes with matching receptors move into our blood (memory B and T cells, looking for the next infection) and bone marrow (plasma cells), where they produce antibodies to fight the infection.
With CLL, you need to look at your lymphocyte doubling time, not your WBC doubling time, because particularly during infections, your WBC increase may primarily be driven by an increase in your neutrophil count, which can increase from 2,000 to 9,000 and still be within the normal reference range. So that can account for a large part of your 16,000 to 28,000 change.
Having an IV vitamin C dose probably only further increased or at least maintained your high lymphocyte/WBC count. May I ask who recommended the IV vitamin C infusions? I very much doubt it was your CLL specialist, because
per table 1 of Vitamin C and Immune Function (2017),
Enhances differentiation and proliferation [62,63,76,77,78,79,80,81,82]"
You can check all those references, but while the effect on B lymphocytes is uncertain, there's good evidence that vitamin C enhances the proliferation of natural killer lymphocytes and possibly T lymphocytes, depending on the blood serum concentration.
Finally, CLL specialists don't get particularly interested in lymphocyte counts under 30, which could mean a WBC of under 40, due to the to be expected changes in other lymphocyte counts. Even when the lymphocyte count is over 30 and doubling in under 6 months, good specialists just monitor more closely, looking for further confirmation that our CLL has become active and treatment is indicated. The lymphocyte count can stabilise after rapid growth at what might seem to be a very high level, but doesn't worry CLL specialists. We have members in watch and wait with lymphocyte counts in the several hundred thousands.
Thank you. My lymphocyte count is 26, doubled in 6 months. You are correct, it was not my CLL specialist who recommended Vitamin C. It was a naturopath/pharmacist. But as long as Vitamin C is not known to “feed” leukemia cancer stem cells or malignant cells and is known to be an immune boost, is there a reason to avoid it beyond expense, inconvenience etc.?
About 15 years ago, there was a theory around that after treatment, CLL recovered from CLL stem cells that were immune to treatment. That theory seems to have gone by the wayside. CLL is now thought to develop during the B cell maturation process, not from a stem cell gone cancerous.
The reason CLL usually eventually returns, is that it is distributed throughout our body, with the exception of our corneas (no blood supply). Treatment resistant sub-clones develop during CLL cell division and because CLL has lost some of the ability to detect and correct DNA damage and should that fail, trigger apoptosis (cell death). Hence CLL cells accumulate because cell division occurs faster than the cells die through apoptosis. CLL cells surround themselves with a protective tumor micro-environment, which also helps some of them weather treatment. See: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...
The issue with immune boosters, is that if you look at the science behind them, they work by boosting lymphocyte production, usually B cells - and that's what proponents of immune boosters highlight! Unfortunately, you aren't likely to boost your total immune system response by just making more lymphocytes. They need to be able to work with other parts of the immune system through signalling, which CLL disrupts. To use a car analogy, it's like putting an extra gear into the gear box. Without a selector, it's no use to you. There's a very good graphic in the paper my Aussie co-admin posted about yesterday, which illustrates how CLL impacts the immune system. See: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...
This post healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo... goes into how to find a good naturopath. A naturopath/pharmacist would likely have better training than most naturopaths, but I've noticed a common failing with naturopaths, is that they tend to lump all leukemias in together and don't appreciate the difference between myeloid and lymphoid leukemias (different cell signalling, hence different susceptibilities to natural therapies). General oncologists unfortunately tend to do this too, but at least they specialise in cancers. Because they tend to lump all B-cell Non-Hodgkins lymphomas (of which CLL is just one of the chronic types) in together, it's unfortunately common for general oncologists to recommend treatment for CLL, when the WBC grows beyond 100,000. See: healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...
That's why it's wise to search out a specialist who sees lots of CLL patients!
Perhaps reassuringly (or frustratingly), one of our members tried IV Vitamin C infusions for a year and reported no difference in his absolute lymphocyte count.
Good question my WBC and ALC climb never stabilized at all in the 14 months between diagnosis and first treatment. My ALC was doubling every 2.5 months. I suspect the reason why the WBC is used as a measure of blood testing advancement of CLL is because other measures of blood test results are not as dramatic. RBC going from 5.0 to 4.0 is small but big deal. Blessings.
I did have an infection (diverticulitis) raise my wbc count. After antibiotics, it fell back to normal (for me). I’ll tell you my usual recommendation- take a big dose of D3 daily beside your C
When, or I should say the month before, I was first diagnosed with CLL, my doctor called me to ask "Had I had had an infection, cough, cold, flu etc., recently." after he looked at my blood test for kidney function. I told him that I was not aware of any. So he said "your White cell count is rather high. Lets do another blood test in two weeks. " And the same increase for that blood test. And the next. That was when he then sent me to the Haematologist at the hospital, and they confirmed CLL. The next few three-monthly blood tests, all showed a rise in number from 11,000 up to 35,000. We were going from Autumn into winter and I did catch a LOT of sore throats. I have since changed my lifestyle: I got a dog, so walk five miles everyday, I eat less meat, I've cut down on alcohol intake. Fortunately the rise has slowed to 3% increase every six months, since then, over the last seven years. I have had very few infections and hope to keep it that way. `So it does look as though infections do trigger an increase in WBC, and may drop afterwards. But with CLL it may keep increasing. Different people, different lifestyles, different responses.
Hi there, I to was diagnosed in 2022 at a level of 14000 and few months later didn't feel well and shot up to 22000 then dropped to 18000. And settled down for few months and shot back up 26000. But from viewing other posts this jo jo effect seems to be for most of us. I think it's part of the condition I think...
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