[Leon]

Hi, I am 48 years old with no history of any desease except recurring kidney stones over the past 25 years. Over the course of the past 9 months or so, I started having fluctuating platelet counts, which were found because of pre-op tests for dealing with Kidney stones. Prior to that, I have had no history of any blood disorders. The counts (000s/microLiter) were 246, 80, 213, 120, 120, 139, 62, 46... The last three were while seeing a hemotologist and the later consistent decrease was over the course of 6 weeks. A BMB was done when my count was at 62 and the diagnosis from the pathologist was that it was MDS, though there were no chromosomal abnormalities of any sort and and blasts were at 3%. The hemotologist found it odd that the peripheral blood was actually showing a lower number of platelets than would be indicated by what was observed in the bone marrow. When the count reached 46, she decided to try, partially as a diagnostic, prednisone. After 1 week on 100mg/day the peripheral count went to 110. She decided to drop the dosage to 60mg/day for two weeks, and the count returned into the mid 60s. Again she raised to 100mg/day for 1 week and the count went to 140. Now after yet another week of 100mg/day followed by a week of 80mg/day the count was 111. She is now decreasing the dosage to 70mg for two weeks, presumably with the goal of further reduction in the dosage.

I guess one thing I am confused about is whether I do in fact have MDS or not. If I do, it would have to be in the very low risk zone of the various ways in which MDS is staged, but my understanding was that MDS does not respond to corticosteroids alone. Any ideas, suggestions would be very welcome.