5) The UK study(4) involved hospital outpatients with no history or suspicion of cancer and the Italian study(5) involved individuals from a rural community referred for routine blood tests (e.g. blood glucose, blood lipids). CLL-phenotype cells in these patients typically represented <10% of total B-cells and absolute CLL-like cell counts were usually below 15 CLL-like cells/μL. In both studies, the prevalence increased with age and a higher proportion of males were affected.(4, 5) In addition to CLL-like clones, non-CLL phenotype MBL (CD5−) cases were detected in 1–2% of individuals based on a perturbation of kappa:lambda ratio.
