A new app developed in Denmark may help doctors make treatment choices for patients with leukemia. The trade magazine recently published Communications Magazine about this research.
About a quarter of all patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) develop a serious infection or an aggressive form of the disease that requires earlier treatment. It is important that practitioners are able to properly assess the risk of such developments. To help with this, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed an app together with haematologists from the Rigshospitalet in that city.
A total of 112 million blood samples from 1.3 million Danes were analysed. In this study group, 1,123 individuals had CLL. By studying the percentage of lymphocytes, the researchers found that patients who saw a rapid increase in white blood cells often showed a higher mutation rate of the leukemia. They then had to deal with an aggressive form of CLL.
The reverse also turned out to be the case: fewer mutations were present in patients whose percentage of leukocytes showed limited growth. The association between the leukocyte content and the degree of mutation appeared to be a good predictor of the aggressiveness of the leukemia, according to the researchers. In this way, a treatment plan can be drawn up on the basis of this data.
The Danish researchers want to further expand the dataset of the app with other possible predictors, in order to arrive at even more precise representations of the disease course on the basis of blood tests and genetic data, and thus to more appropriate treatment strategies.
Reference
Andersen MA, Grand MK, Brieghel C, et al. Pre-diagnostic trajectories of lymphocytosis predict time to treatment and death in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Commun Med (Lond). 2022 May 12;2:50.