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The Faulty Gene Behind Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Tracking Treatment Progress: Lab Tests For CML

Leukemia Living with Leukemia

Learning The Language of CML Lab Tests

Summary & Participants

Blood tests are routine in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia. Hear how one patient learned how to follow her treatment progress by studying her complicated lab tests.

Medically Reviewed On: June 16, 2008

Webcast Transcript

HARMONY: It was a whole new vocabulary for me, from high school biology, you know, "There are white cells, there are red cells." That's kind of where I started with it. And then, as with any new adventure, which this has turned out to be, there's a vocabulary that's gained over time and an understanding of how things work together.

ANNOUNCER: Harmony George Jaursch's learning curve started just as the winter rains of Portland, Oregon, were clearing for spring.

HARMONY: It was May of 2000, and I noticed a lump in my abdomen. And at that time, I had kind of a stomachache that day and I thought, "Oh, you know, something's up with that," and I waited two or three days and went to the doc.

MICHAEL MAURO, MD: Well, once they recognized that her spleen was enlarged, she did have some standard blood work done, and her white blood cell count was very elevated. At presentation it was about 175,000, and normal is about 5,000 to 10,000. As well, her platelet count was measured and was also elevated. Not terribly high, but, I believe, in the 600,000 to 700,000 range. So she had many of the classic presenting signs and symptoms for CML.

HARMONY: Well, pretty panicked. I had at that time my boys, our twin boys, were two and a half. And the median life expectancy with CML at that time was six years. So that was pretty tough stuff to deal with. And there was a brief moment of "Why me?" and then a long time of, "What next?" "What to do now?"

ANNOUNCER: Harmony was young enough when diagnosed with CML, or chronic myeloid leukemia, that she and her doctors could consider the only "cure" for the disease: a bone marrow transplant.

But then a donor fell through, and Harmony re-evaluated her options, for transplants are risky.

HARMONY: I discovered through, actually through the Internet, that there were some trials being done here on a really promising treatment for exactly what I had, and the doctor that I'd been talking to about the bone marrow transplant was familiar with those trials.

ANNOUNCER: The drug was Gleevec, known then as STI-571. Harmony joined the study and, by the luck of the draw, was placed on Gleevec rather than on the traditional treatments of interferon and ARA-C.

MICHAEL MAURO, MD: And within a few weeks' time she saw normalization of her blood counts, which is right on target. And that was the first good sign.

HARMONY: When my results came back and it was within a month that my disease was beating a very hasty retreat, it was a tremendous relief to me.

ANNOUNCER: Those first tests were important, but other therapies usually accomplish the same thing: a normalization of blood counts.

A more significant finding would come with tests that checked for signs of the abnormal Philadelphia chromosome. That took more time.

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