Chronic lymphocytic leukemia in African Americans.
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most prevalent leukemia in the United States with almost 4390 attributable deaths per year. Epidemiologic data compiled by the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program identifies important differences in incidence and survival for African Americans with CLL. Although the incidence of CLL is lower among African Americans than among Caucasians (4.6 and 6.2 per 100 000 men, respectively), age-adjusted survival is inferior. African American patients with CLL are almost twice as likely to die from a CLL-related complication in the first 5 years after diagnosis as are Caucasian patients with CLL. The biologic basis for these observations is almost entirely unexplored, and a comprehensive clinical analysis of African American patients with CLL is lacking. This is the subject of the present review.
Department of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. catherine.coombs@duke.edu
Catherine C
CC
Coombs
Lorenzo
L
Falchi
J Brice
JB
Weinberg
Alessandra
A
Ferrajoli
Mark C
MC
Lanasa
D001741:Black or African American; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015451:Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000401:mortality; D008297:Male; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D018426:SEER Program