Molecular characterization of chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients with a high number of losses in 13q14

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- et al.[Background]: Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and 13q deletion as their only FISH abnormality could have a different outcome depending on the number of cells displaying this aberration. Thus, cases with a high number of 13q- cells (13q-H) had both shorter overall survival and time to first therapy. The goal of the study was to analyze the genetic profile of 13q-H patients. [Design and Methods]: A total of 102 samples were studied, 32 of which served as a validation cohort and five were healthy donors. [Results]: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients with higher percentages of 13q- cells (>80%) showed a different level of gene expression as compared to patients with lower percentages (