Does WBC count of 40000 suggest leukemia?

Hi,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

Based on your query, my opinion is as follows:

1. A count of 40000 is not high enough to think of leukemia on an immediate basis and leukemoid. The standard definition says the count should be more than 50000 and should be caused by reactive causes outside the bone marrow.
2. If you really need to discuss between leukemia and leukemoid reaction in the absence of any clinical history or clinical findings, then in CBC (complete blood count), look for a platelet count.
3. If low, then think of acute leukemias, and if normal, then no need for elaboration. Without a proper clinical history difficult to rule out leukemoid reaction.
4. Then need to order the next easy thing, a peripheral smear to look for any immature cells or atypical cells. If present, then leukemia or lymphoma spillover, depending on the type of cells and the blast percentage.
5. Next depending on lymph node enlargement, lymph node FNAC (fine needle aspiration cytology), or biopsy the need will arise to go for a bone marrow biopsy to do the actual blast percentage or atypical cell evaluation.
6. If the morphology of cells is insufficient, then need to go into markers for evaluation of leukemia according to the WHO - World Health Organization classification. Both flow cytometry and cytogenetics are necessary.
7. When you are specifically talking about lymphoblastic leukemia or lymphomas, TdT (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase), CDs (cluster of differentiations) and cytoplasmic mu chains play a role. The practical way is to look at the maturity of each cell.
8. At each stage, they express different markers indicating the cell type and the stage of development. You need to look into specific CD markers.
9. Any book dealing with lymphomas will usually indicate what markers are expressed in various stages. There are over 350 markers and you can go about looking into basic important markers in identifying the cells.

I hope this helps you.

Thank you.

Hi,

Welcome back to icliniq.com.

Based on your query, my opinion is as follows:

1. If you look into the recent WHO classification of any leukemia or lymphoma, it is based on morphology, cytochemistry, immunophenotyping, and cytogenetics.
2. Morphology is always first, which the FAB classification (French-American-British classification) is based on.
3. These malignancies based on FAB classification like AML (acute myeloid leukemia) M0-M7 and L1-L3 are based on morphology. However, this is grossly alone inadequate for treatment purposes, towards which the WHO classification is leaning on.
4. For WHO classification, there is no specific algorithm, compared to lymphomas as they are based on a combination of morphology, immunophenotyping, and cytogenetics.
5. Both prognosis and treatment choice for AML patients are based on the presence or absence of specific genetic alterations, which determine AML classification in three risk based-categories: Favorable, intermediate, and unfavorable. This classification is usually based on cytogenetic information.

I hope this helps you.

Thank you.