Ask the Doctor Question:
I am a caregiver of a CLL patient who has been on BTK treatment for a month. The recent blood work results show all blood work almost back to normal! We are very relieved that the treatments are working without side effects and with organs staying healthy. On his patient portal, he received the numbers on the marker for inflammation is higher than it has been on any of his tests over the first month of treatment. What does this signify?
Answer: Inflammatory markers can be indicative of several different conditions including infection, chronic inflammation conditions like osteoarthritis, and are a common finding for cancer in general. It’s important to remember that in CLL, generally no one abnormal lab value is cause for concern. Rather it is more important to track lab trends over time and correlate them with any new symptoms. We have created a tool that many in our community like to use to track lab result trends over time. You can read more about that here.
