British Journal of Haematology
British Journal of Haematology
5 years ago

Diagnosis of CLL revisited: increased specificity by a modified five-marker scoring system including CD200

Zlatana Pasalic, Veronika K. Wittmann, Thomas Köhnke, Wolfgang Hiddemann, Felix Lichtenegger, Marion Subklewe, Karsten Spiekermann, Veit L. Bücklein
The modified Matutes score has been the basis for the diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) by flow cytometry for the past 15 years. To increase the specificity of the current score we systematically evaluated the diagnostic value of established as well as novel markers, such as CD200, in a large cohort of patients with untreated B-cell malignancies (n = 370). Double positivity for CD5 and CD23 was of very high value to differentiate between CLL and non-CLL cases. In addition, lack of FMC7 expression as well as CD79b expression intensity showed high sensitivity (90·4% and 92·3%) with acceptable specificity (74·4% and 76·9%). For surface IgM, low or absent expression displayed poor specificity in distinguishing CLL from non-CLL cases (51,3%; sensitivity 83,7%). Finally, CD200 positivity showed high sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, CD5/CD23, FMC7, CD79b and CD200 were included in our new CLLflow score, which retained high sensitivity (97·1% vs. 98·6% for the Matutes score, P = 0·38), but showed markedly increased specificity (87·2% vs. 53·8%, P < 0·001). These results were confirmed in our validation cohort (sensitivity 97·0% vs. 100%, P = not applicable; specificity 86·4% vs. 59·1%, P = 0·03). Our data support the use of our new CLLflow score for the diagnosis of CLL with significantly higher specificity.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1111/bjh.14901

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.