Somatic hypermutation introduces mutations into IgV genes during affinity maturation of the B cell response. Mutations are introduced nonrandomly, and are generally targeted to the complementarity determining regions (CDRs). Subsequent selection against mutations that result in lower affinity or nonfunctional Ig increases the relative number of mutations in the CDRs. Investigation of somatic hy...

Background: Mutation in NPM1 gene has been reported to be the most common genetic mutation in de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML). AML with NPM1 gene mutation usually presents with higher initial leukocyte and blast cell counts and negative CD34 expression. We aimed to investigate the difference of initial leukocyte counts, bone marrow blast cell counts and expression of CD34 among patients wi...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Activation-induced cytidine deaminase is essential for somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination of the immunoglobulin genes in B cells. It has been proposed that aberrant targeting of the somatic hypermutation machinery is instrumental in initiation and progression of B-cell non Hodgkin's lymphomas. In this study, we investigated the B-cell receptor and the...

The diagnosis of CLL is established by a sustained increase of peripheral CD5+ B-lymphocytes (‡5 · 10 cells/l) not explained by other clinical disorders and a predominance of small, morphologically mature lymphocytes in the blood smear. The composite immunophenotype CD5+, CD19+, CD20+ (low), CD23+, sIg low, CD79b low, FMC7– allows most cases of CLL to be distinguished from other CD5+ B-cell lym...

INTRODUCTION High-dose methylprednisolone (HDMP) in combination with rituximab is active in the treatment of relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), but serious infections are frequent. Recently published data suggested that high-dose dexamethasone might be equally effective as HDMP despite a lower cumulative dose. MATERIAL AND METHODS We performed retrospective analysis of 60...