Hi there is myelosupression sign of disease coming back? I am on dasatinib and my blood vessel is pounding around my neck and head and cause mild headache. My blood count are going low. Or myelosupression caused by dasatinib? I was in bp and treated with tki along with chemo and able to achieve cytogenetic remission. My bcr abl was 25% when last tested. Its been almost 2 month on dasatinib 100 mg.
You are here
Myelosuppression
No, myelosuppression is not a sign of CML coming back. Achieving cytogenetic remission is excellent. You are doing well.
But you are on a high dose of dasatinib and in the beginning of treatment. You need to be very vigilant that your blood counts (especially neutrophils) do not go too low (i.e. below 0.5 absolute count (depending on scale used)). Your blood system is normalizing with leukemic cells getting killed off faster than new normal ones get created. And new cell formation is suppressed by dasatinib action leaving a gap (for some patients). This is myelosuppression.
You may need to lower dose and or have drug interruptions until your body adjusts letting blood counts rise and then re-start treatment (lower dose recommended). I went through this early in my treatment with dasatinib. It became dangerous in my case with neutrophils < 0.1 ... which is very bad. I had to stop treatment for over two months. You should be having CBC blood counts weekly until you are stable.
I now take only 20 mg dasatinib. I still have some myelosuppression (mild anemia) and I am "undetected" (PCRU). Lowering my dose was the best thing my doctor did and I hope others learn from this.