Blood Blasts Showing In Blood Work

Hello, @cancun1982. Blast cells are immature blood cells that eventually mature into specific blood cells. Generally they’re found only inside the bone marrow. Occasionally there can be a few found in the circulating blood. Whether or not a seizure could cause this to happen is a question for your daughter’s doctor.

If there are a large number of blasts found in circulation blood it can be an indication of a more serious health issue. A peripheral blood smear is a test used to evaluate blasts, where pathologist views a sample of blood with a microscope to check for elevated or abnormal-looking blasts. Do you know if your daughter had this test?

There’s no reason for alarm because in some cases, elevated blasts are temporary. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea for a followup blood draw in a couple of weeks. What did your daughter’s doctor recommend?

Hi @cancun1982 You mentioned your daughter had blood work in April which showed blasts in her peripheral blood. It’s now almost the end of May. I missed the timing on this when first replied and realize several weeks have already passed since her labs. As I mentioned, blast cells are not normally found in circulating blood so just to be on the safe side it would be a good idea to have repeat labs relatively soon.

Has there been any followup to the results which showed blast cells in her peripheral blood? Was your daughter having symptoms of any kind that had the doctor ordering labs? Has she had a peripheral blood smear on her test results?

Hi @loribmt My daughter’s neurologist wanted labs done being she is at the max dose of her meds. She wanted to see if she metabolizes the clobazam at a faster rate, if so she could be given more. Being we were taking blood she wanted to do a cbc with it. When I heard back from the neurologist, it was told everything is fine. Being my daughters is on the max dose of clobazam, they wanted her to be seen by a specialist to make sure she is on the right medicine. Her neurologist wants to put her on a second medicine but before she does that, she wanted a second opinion. I was able to get in to see a specialist the end of May. The specialist wanted her records, so I gathered up all the documents. It was me gathering of the documents where I saw blasts showing under the abnormal column. I’m not in the medical field and started to google and everywhere I looked it said it’s not a good thing. I asked the specialist (pediatric neurologist) about it and what causes this, he told me he is not the right person and I would need to get with a hematologist. So, last week Thursday I called her pediatrician for some guidance. He reviewed her blood results and told me that this can be caused by infection, acute stress, or it can be something more serious. He told me that we need to get her retested, being there could be some error on the lab side too. I have the order to get it done, he is doing a cbc with diff and platelets. I have been reading more about clobazam online and found some information stating it can cause bone marrow suppressions. Not 100% sure what bone marrow suppressions are but it sounded like this could be causing the blasts. I’m praying this is the case! The specialist we saw, feels she should only be on one medication so she will be coming off this one completely soon. He wants to try a different medication and see if it controls the sezuires.

Oh my goodness, you and your little girl have been through so much already. I hope this new medication will work well for her and minimize the seizures.

There are some medications which can cause a decrease in bone marrow activity, (myelosuppression) which means the bone marrow isn’t able to produce normal amounts of blood cells. The bone marrow being the heart of the blood manufacturing site in the body. If your little girl’s medication is indicated as one of the potential meds that causes myelosuppression, that may be the reason for her blood results.

I’m sure your little girl isn’t excited about having another blood draw but it’s really important to find out for certain. Her doctor has ordered a CBC with differential. The differential provides a more detailed analysis of the different types of blood cells present in a sample compared to a CBC without a differential; Details such as the percentage of each type of white blood cell, red blood cell indices, and platelet counts.

Will you please let me know what you find out? Sending your little girl a ‘grandmotherly’ hug. ☺️