Chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients with a V1-69 gene rearrangement do not have inferior survival with respect to patients that express other unmutated VH genes

Recent studies indicate that VH gene usage in B-CLL may have prognostic impact independently of VH gene mutation status. The V1-69 gene is the most frequently rearranged VH gene in B-CLL and is almost always unmutated. We therefore investigated whether patients with a V1-69 gene rearrangement differ in clinical course and outcome with respect to patients expressing other unmutated VH genes. We show that V1-69 B-CLLs constitute a uniform group of patients that more often present at advanced clinical stages and require early treatment, but their survival does not differ significantly from patients with other unmutated VH genes.