You are here

Tasigna Doesnt Seem to Work, increasing BCR ABL

Categories:

Hey everyone! 

Ive been a quiet Reader in this Forum for about 6 Months now. Yesterday i got my bloodwork Back and im pretty concerned.

about me: 24 years old, Male, Diagnosed With 84% BCR ABL 9 Months ago.

Maybe some of you can help me.

I was Diagnosed 9 Months ago put on 600mg Tasigna and after this my BCR-ABL evolved Like this:

3 Months: 1.6

6 Months: 0.8

9 Months(Yesterday): 1.7

 

Because of this counts i have a few quetions:

The increase seems pretty high, my Doc assumed i didnt Took all my Tasigna pills, which isnt the Case because i never forget one. Maybe i Took Them Like 20 Minutes later then normal Here and there.

My doctor wants to try another 6 weeks before we Switch to a different drug.

 

So my Main questions are:

Is that a typical Case of a Mutation?

If Nilotinib Doesnt do the Job, would it make sense to do a Mutation Analysis, because Nilotinib works against Most Mutations, the Other TKIs dont?

 

I am very scared of a Transplantation and hoped i can keep my CML under control With TKIs. Maybe some of you have experienced similar Change in bloodwork, or Heard it from Others. 

 

Hi there,

Your doctor sounds sensible - give it a few more weeks, test again and if there's not an improvement switching is a smart move. PCR testing is imperfect and this rise could be just a blip which is why your doctor isn't switching you now.

A rise doesn't necessarily mean you have a mutation, sometimes a particular TKI just doesn't work that effectively for some people but another one works very well. I didn't respond to imatinib very well, didn't have any particular mutation but did great on dasatinib. I imagine dasatinib would be high on the list of candidates for you to switch to.

David. 

 

I understand your concern as you dipped below CCYR (1%) and then back up again. The jump looks a lot of paper but I don’t think really it’s that large. You’ve had a good response from the beginning so my feeling is as David said test again and see what the result says. My money is on lower again as we’ve seen so many times on this forum. A lot of us turtles bobbed around 0.1 before having bigger drops eventually.

I am on Tasigna also 600mg and I mostly take them on time but there have been a fair few times they’d been taken later on the 2nd dose. Not ideal but it hasn’t effected my response as far as I can see. Having the blips really doesn’t mean a mutation is present, our bodies are complicated and PCR testing is imperfect. No single PCR test requires action but 2 or 3 of a similar jump will. And it doesn’t mean a switch your consultant can up you to 800mg which is what they were going to do with me if I didn’t make MMR at 2.5 years and luckily for me I did finally. You might be slightly resistant to Tasigna which my consultant thought I was and that could still be the case but it’s still working so don’t get too hung up on the number as such. You’re also young and although I can’t prove it it seems younger people tend to respond slower from the few years I’ve been on this wonderful forum. Easier said than done I know!

All the best

Al