IMPACT OF BLOOD PARAMETERS ON BCR/ABL1 P210 TESTING IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC MYELOID LEUKEMIA: A PILOT STUDY

Abstract

Objective: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is one of the most common hematological malignancies derived from the BCR/ABL1 fusion gene. Patients with CML generally manifest leukocytosis with basophilia and neutrophilia. The verification of CML is often based on the detection of BCR/ABL1 fusion. We aimed to investigate the impact of peripheral blood (PB) differential and complete blood count (CBC) on BCR/ABL1 p210 test ordering in patients with suspected CML. Methods: We performed a retrospective assessment of patients tested for the first time for BCR/ABL1 p210 fusion. We obtained clinical and laboratory findings of 235 patients from the database of our clinic. BCR/ABL1 p210 fusion was detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). We implemented t-tests or Mann–Whitney U tests for the comparison of continuous data. We plotted the receiver operating characteristic (ROC curves) and calculated the area under the ROC curve (AUC) for each parameter. Results: Among 235 patients, 25 (10.6%) received a new diagnosis of CML. CML patients had significantly increased white blood cell count (WBC) with differential. Absolute basophil count showed the highest area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.829, which had a cut-off value of 0.3 × 103/ ?L. 76.00% of CML cases had an absolute basophil count of ?0.3 × 103/?L, while 95.24% of the non-CML cases had an absolute basophil count of <0.3 × 103/?L. Conclusion: Our results indicate that an absolute basophil count of ?0.3 × 103/?L can help improve BCR/ABL1 p210 test ordering and reduce healthcare costs.