Chromosome changes in human chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Abstract

Karyotypes were studied in B- and T-lymphocyte cultures from 66 patients with B-cell CLL and two patients with T-cell CLL. Thirty-one of the B-cell cases had not been treated for their disease; 35 had received radiotherapy, corticosteroids, or cytostatic drugs. Only one of the untreated patients had a clone with an abnormal karyotype. This was present in all her mitotic cells found in cultures containing lipopolysaccharide B (LPS, a B-cell mitogen) and 10% of those in cultures with pokeweed mitogen (PWM, a T- and B-cell mitogen). The karyotype of this clone was 46,XX,t(6;7),t(7;13),t(11;14). Four of the treated patients had clones with specific chromosome changes. These were 47,XY,+12 in 10% of leukoagglutinin (LA, T-cell mitogen) and protein A (PA, T- and B-cell mitogen) cultures in one case; 47,XX,+12,del(14) in 80% of LPS cultures and in all spontaneously dividing cells in another case; 46,XY,t(6;20) in all LPS cultures in another; and 46,XX,t(1;8) in all PA cultures in another. Both structural and numerical nonclonal chromosome aberrations (9%) were found in 24% of the different cultures of cells from untreated patients, and in 15% of the cells in 20% of the different cultures in the patient who had received treatment. Both patients with T-cell CLL had received treatment for their disease, and had a normal karyotype in all cultures.