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Effective treatment and prevention of infections challenge management of patients with chronic lymphicytic leukemia (CLL). The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the reduction of outpatient hospital visits as a part of non-pharmaceutical interventions that could affect the incidence of infectious complications. Study enrolled patients with CLL receiving ibrutinib or/and venetoclax who were observed at the Moscow City Centre of Hematology from 01 April 2017 to 31 March 2021. We found a reduction in the incidence of infectious episodes after the implementation of the lockdown in Moscow in 01 April 2020, when compared to data on the year prior to the lockdown (p < 0.0001), as well as when compared to the predictive model (p = 0.02), and based on individual infection profiles using cumulative sums (p < 0.0001). Bacterial infections had 4.44-fold decrease, bacterial in combination with undefined infections had 4.89-fold decrease, viral infections had unsignificant changes. The decrease in the number of outpatient visits coincides with the time of the lockdown could be a likely factor, explaining a decline in the incidence of infection. Patients were clustered according incidence and severity of infectious episodes for subgroup mortality assessment. No differences in overall survival due to COVID-19 were observed. Typical respiratory infections, bacterial and undefined, the transmission of which may be affected by patient-to-patient contact in the settings of out-patient health care visits were decreased, possibly due to SARS-CoV-2 restrictive measures. A positive correlation between outpatient visits and the incidence of bronchial and upper respiratory tract infection points at the role of hospital-acquired infection and attests to the necessity of reorganizing care for all patients with CLL., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Polymorphisms in genes coding xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes are considered as risk factors modifying susceptibility to cancer. We developed a biochip for the analysis of 18 mutations in 10 genes of metabolizing system: CYP1A1, CYP2D6, GSTT1, GSTM1, MTHFR, MTRR, NQO1, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, and NAT2. Using allele-specific hybridization on the biochip 76 T-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) patients, 83 B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) patients, and 177 healthy donors were tested. Polymorphic CYP1A1 alleles were more frequent in B-CLL patients relative to normal controls, for example, a combination of polymorphic variants 4887C > A, 4889A > G, and 6235T > C (OR = 1.76, 95% CI = 1.0-3.1). The GSTM1 null genotype was more frequent in NHL patients relative to controls (OR = 1.82, 95% CI = 1.1-3.1). The combination of unfavorable polymorphic CYP1A1 variants and GSTM1 null genotype was found more frequently in B-CLL patients relative to controls (OR = 2.52, 95% CI = 1.3-4.9). In addition, male B-CLL patients demonstrated a significantly increased occurrence of heterozygous and homozygous allele *2 of CYP2C9 gene (OR = 2.38, 95% CI = 1.1-5.2) as well as a combination of alleles *2 and *3 of the gene (OR = 2.09, 95% CI = 1.1-3.9). Thus, our findings show the association between polymorphic alleles of CYP1A1, GSTM1, and CYP2C9 genes and the risk to develop NHL or B-CLL. The developed biochip can be considered as a convenient analytical tool for research studies and predictive analysis in oncohematology., ((c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

TNR/11q#1 is a polymorphic trinucleotide (GCC)n repeat located within the minimal region of the 11q deletion in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). It was recently shown that certain alleles of this repeat are associated with a worse prognosis in CLL patients. To investigate the role of TNR/11q#1 variants as risk-modifying factors in leukemogenesis, we conducted a case-control study on 113 acute lymphotic leukemia (ALL) patients, 82 CLL patients and 146 healthy controls of Russian origin. Comparison of allele and genotype distributions in the control, ALL and CLL groups, performed by Fisher's exact test with two-sized P-value, showed significant decrease in the presence of the GCC(6) allele in the ALL and CLL groups compared to controls. Moreover, 'rare' alleles GCC(7-8) and GCC(13-14) were significantly overrepresented in the ALL group versus controls. We found that CLL risk genotypes were those with both alleles containing more than 6 GCC repeats (P = 0,0212, odds ratio = 1,68 (95% CI, 1,121...2,531)). ALL risk genotypes include three allele combination variants: 1) both alleles containing more than 6 GCC repeats (P = 0,0019, odds ratio = 1,756 (95% CI 1,223...2,502)); 2) one of the alleles containing 7 or 8 repeats (P = 0,0155, odds ratio = 18,22 (95% CI 1,93...136.37)); 3) one of the alleles containing more than 12 repeats (P = 0,0209, Odds ratio = 2,599 (95% CI 1,161...5,815)). Association of certain alleles and genotypes of the TNR/11q#1 repeat with both acute and chronic lymphocytic leukemia suggests the presence of a cancer related gene, involved in a wide spectrum of neoplasia, in the vicinity of this repeat.