Re: Starting with Hydrea vs Gleevec

[Guest guest]

Hi and welcome to the group. Many doctors start their patients off

with Hydrea because it brings the white count down very quickly. In

the early days, everyone started out on Hydrea but now with Gleevec

being front line treatment, I suppose some are skipping the Hydrea.

Tracey

dx Jan 20002

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[Guest guest]

Hi Marcos,

I was on Hydrea for 3 weeks which brought my white count down to

normal but it didn't do anything for my platelets which kept

climbing. I started the Gleevec after the 3 weeks and it took

another 2 weeks after that before my platelets started to fall. My

platelets worried me more than my white count at that time (they were

1.6 million). This of course was 7 years ago. It's possible today

that they don't use Hydrea as readily as in the " old days " .

Tracey

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[Guest guest]

Hi Marcos,

I was in CP when diagnosed despite the high platelets. Although they

take into account a variety of features (spleen size, platelet count,

basophil count, age, Hgb count etc), the defining feature for

determining disease phase was/is blast count. On one smear I had 7%

but when a larger sample of blood was looked at, that reduced to 2%.

In those days AP consisted of anything over 5% but now they use 15%

as the marker for AP.

Your right though, platelets over 1 million was traditionally

considered a very bad clinical feature. That was because Interferon

didn't do anything for platelets. People who had platelet problems

before Gleevec typically didn't fair well at all. Thankfully,

Gleevec does work on platelets because of the PDGF inhibition.

Needless to say, those early days were a bit worrisome! We've come a

long way baby

Tracey

> >> > Hi and welcome to the group. Many doctors start their patients

off

> >> > with Hydrea because it brings the white count down very

quickly.

> > In

> >> > the early days, everyone started out on Hydrea but now with

> > Gleevec

> >> > being front line treatment, I suppose some are skipping the

> > Hydrea.

> >> >

> >> > Tracey

> >> > dx Jan 20002

> >> >

> >> > --- In , " longing4sunnsand " <rjkjak76@>

wrote:

> >> >>

> >> >> >