Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia with SF3B1 Mutation

The authors found that chronic lymphocytic leukemia in patients with mutations in the SF3B1 RNA splicing gene has a more aggressive natural history than that in patients without such mutations. To the Editor: Somatic mutations in SF3B1 have been studied as potential predictors of time to initial treatment in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. 1 , 2 Wang et al. 1 assessed a cohort of both untreated and treated patients. We have data that show the influence of SF3B1 mutations on the natural history of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Our study involved a cohort of 279 untreated patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia; this allowed us to obtain robust clinical correlates. 3 Patients with mutations in SF3B1 had more aggressive disease than patients without these mutations (Table 1). Cox analyses showed that the mutational status of SF3B1 had . . .