Can someone be MRD negative but not in a complete remission?

Can someone be MRD negative but not in a complete remission?

So can you be MRD negative, but not in a complete remission? So that's a difficult question to answer in some ways, because the language that we use is not always clear. So you can be in what's called a morphologic remission and be either MRD positive or MRD negative. So that means that we look under the bone marrow, we don't see evidence of active leukemia. Those patients can be MRD positive or MRD negative. You can also be what's called a complete remission. Complete remission means that not only under the microscope, do we not detect any leukemia, but also complete remission also means that the blood counts have recovered. So your white count recovered and your platelet count have recovered. So, yes, even in that situation, patients can be in complete remission and they can be MRD positive or MRD negative. That said, if someone is MRD negative, they're generally speaking, they have to be in a morphologic remission, but they don't necessarily have to be in a complete remission because you can be MRD negative, meaning no detectable leukemia, but your blood counts may still not have risen after your last cycle of chemotherapy, for example.