New clinical tool for clonal hematopoiesis identifies patients at high risk for blood cancer

Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is a recently characterized condition in which the genetic mutations associated with leukemia and other blood cancers are found in the blood of individuals without cancer. This pre-cancerous state is fairly common—for example, it’s present in roughly 15% of people over age 65—but only a small percentage, around 4%, will go on to develop blood cancer. Because there is no robust, rigorous way to assess risk, clinicians have struggled to advise CH patients on what the future could hold.