Welcome.

CLL Topics Updates is a publication of CLL Topics Inc. We are dedicated to the education and empowerment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients and their caregivers. You can learn more about us and our mission by clicking on the links.

Our emphasis is on current developments in the field - the good, bad and ugly of therapy choices available to our patient community, review of interesting clinical trials, best practices recommended by expert clinicians, new drugs in the pipeline, and how to deal with frequent health complications associated with CLL. Our main agenda is to translate medical jargon of published research into straightforward English that our patients can understand and use. You will find we are pretty bloody minded in sticking to mainstream medicine and topics that interest our patient community. If you have CLL, we hope this site becomes your "CLL Owner's Manual".

None of us has any affiliation with medical or pharmaceutical industries. The opinions and analyses presented are those of deeply interested layperson observers of the CLL scene. We are not qualified to give you medical guidance.

Our very extensive (more than 4,000 pages of text!) flagship website CLL Topics and the CLL journey of one of our founders Harvey's Journal are accessible to the general public completely free of charge and do not require registration. We hope you visit both of these sites.

CLL Topics Updates is an interactive site, and access is restricted to our registered members only. Registration is free of charge. If you value what we do and the service we provide the CLL patient community, we hope you will join us in this fight - it is after all your fight. We need your passion and active participation to keep CLL Topics Updates going full steam ahead in the future.


Chaya Venkat
Founder

Recent Articles


Date Title & Description
06/30/2009 Half Time

How are we doing?  “Updates” made its debut exactly six months ago, a one year experiment to see if we can continue our education and advocacy efforts on behalf of CLL patients.
06/27/2009 Does Radiation Cause or Make CLL Worse?

Until recently the expert consensus was that there is no connection between CLL and exposure to radiation. Now that answer is a bit more murky. In the absence of a slam-dunk free pass for radiation, should you worry about getting CT scans?
06/11/2009 Pandemic 6 Declared: What it Means to CLL Patients

Today the WHO declared swine flu (H1N1) has reached Pandemic Level 6, stating the obvious. I would like to put this in context to CLL patients and the people who love them.
06/04/2009 A very Promising Vaccine Trial for CLL

Are you feeling lucky?  If you are recently diagnosed CLL patient and you have not yet been around the chemo circuit for too long, here is a very interesting vaccine trial - funded by CLL Topics and our member donations.
06/01/2009 One step closer

The FDA-ODAC meeting went well.  Ten votes for and three against approval of Humax-CD20 (ofatumumab, trade name Arzerra). Next step, we hope the FDA will accept the majority verdict of their advisor committee and formally approve this drug for use in CLL.
05/26/2009 Why Humax-CD20 must be approved

As you know, I will be schlepping to Orlando FL to appear before the FDA panel (May 29th) and plead for approval of ofatumumab (Humax-CD20).  Here is the draft of my comments. 
05/16/2009 Lessons from history

You know what they say, you either learn from history or you are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.  There is much we can learn from past flu pandemics.
Go to Archives