What is the impact of diabetes on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)?

What is the impact of diabetes on chronic lymphocytic leukemia? CLL is a disease in general of older patients who tend to have more medical comorbidities. Although we definitely do take care of younger patients with CLL, anywhere from their 20s onwards, we've seen. But a lot of times with this being a disease that's aging, there are other medical problems that come up. Diabetes is a common one, and so I tell my CLL patients with diabetes, on treatment or off, it's really important to maintain control of your diabetes. Not necessarily because there really isn't a lot of research at all about the interplay between diabetes and CLL, and that can be an area for future research. But because diabetes can really affect any organ in the body, and so working with your diabetes physician to have good blood sugar control and make sure it's not affecting the eyes, the kidney, the heart will be really important because if those organs are affected, it could affect what treatment options you have for CLL. The other thing I'll say is that there's many different drugs used for diabetes. And so just knowing your medications, when you come to your appointment, bringing your medications to the appointment, especially if you're going to be starting treatment, because there can be some interactions between medications that are used to treat CLL and medications that are used to treat diabetes. And almost always we can work together, you know, as long as we know the specific medicine and the dose to make sure we keep you, you know, on track with your diabetes program and the CLL. The other thing that might come up is sometimes we do have to use steroids as a pre-medication for certain, depending on the CLL treatment you choose. Again, it's all specific, and so sometimes there's medications that can raise the blood sugar temporarily. And so I do, you know, work with patients and their doctor to make sure that we keep the blood sugar control, you know, steady and stable, you know, during the treatment. So again, it's more of a collaboration between the health care team. And even if you're not on treatment, just really, you know, the diabetes health, I would say, is just as important as the CLL health. Absolutely. Another big one that comes up is, you know, cardiac, whether it's coronary artery disease or high blood pressure or cardiac arrhythmia. I think those medical conditions are really important to, you know, see your cardiologist or primary care physician to discuss. Especially, you know, CLL is a chronic disease, and so the relationship with your doctor will hopefully be on the order of decades, depending on your age, and so really taking care of, you know, yourself as a whole patient. The CLL is a big component of that, but these other medical issues are really important, too. And so I would say it really applies to any chronic medical condition that you have.