Quote:
Originally Posted by tytd
Hi Chris, I can't really answer the question about cyclosporine and decreased platelets but many of these therapies tend to make the counts worse intially before they start climbing. Simplistically thinking, I guess this happens because the initial bad MDS clone cells that are manufacturing the dysplastic cells are knocked out first before the good normal stem cells can take over again. Since I am a "watch and wait" type of person, I wondered why the docs wanted to initiate therapy without first watching the trend in your mother's counts for a few more months. Did she have a critically low neutropenia or was she having frequent infections or bleeding?? I am just curious since she is in the low risk category ( but maybe she had a high MD Anderson score). I hope the platelets will start moving up soon. Good Luck tytd
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MD Anderson feels that thrombocytopenia is a bad indicator that is not reflected on the IPSS scoring system. They have their own scoring called MDACC (See
this link then choose 'Full Text Choices' to view the whole thing)... The team there felt that because of her extreme vibrancy and zero comorbidities coupled with an abnormal T-Cell something (I honestly don't know), she would be an excellent candidate for this. She has had no infections or bleeding. The only way we knew about this was routine blood tests shows very low platelet and WBC. She was a professional dancer and still works full-time with no symptoms at all.