Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: A Review of Front-line Treatment Options, With a Focus on Elderly CLL Patients

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) remains the most prevalent form of leukemia in the Western world, with no cure to date. Ongoing and essential research into this heterogeneous disease has led to a number of new treatment options becoming available to CLL patients in the past decade. The present review presents the recent developments in the field of CLL treatment, with the main focus on elderly patients and CLL patients with coexisting comorbidities. The review discusses the current treatment regimens that provide the most promising outcomes for patients in this subgroup, with a number of important clinical trials summarized. These clinical trials, which have investigated promising single-agent therapies or combination therapies, are discussed, with an emphasis on the efficacy and tolerability for patients aged ≥ 65 years. Also, the misrepresentation of the true CLL population in many clinical trials and the need for better guidelines for participant inclusion criteria to provide a more realistic and accurate study population are noted

Experimental Infection of Domestic Cats with Bartonella henselae by Inoculation of Ctenocephalides felis (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae) Feces

Caged cat fleas, Ctenocephalides felis (Bouché), were fed on 6 cats; 3 cats were injected with 5 × 107 colony forming units of Bartonella henselae intradermally and 3 cats were injected with an equal volume of saline. After the fleas fed for 4 d, 5 groups of 50 B. henselae-exposed fleas were caged and allowed to feed on 5 cats for 6 d. Five cats each were injected intradermally with 1 ml of saline containing 45 mg of feces from B. henselae-exposed fleas. Five cats were fed 50 B. henselae-exposed fleas and 45 mg of fresh feces from B. henselae-exposed fleas. Five cats received all 3 treatments by using fleas and feces collected from cats inoculated with saline (controls). Cats were bled weekly and tested by culture and serology. The cats that were injected with feces from infected fleas were positive by culture for B. henselae at 1 or 2 wk after exposure and were the only cats to become bacteremic seropositive by week 20