Introduction:

Chronic B lymphoid leukemia is a lymphoproliferative disorder characterized by the accumulation of small, mature-looking lymphocytes in peripheral blood, bone marrow and lymphoid tissues with a long life span. It has great clinical and genetic variability.

Objective:

To describe the cytogenetic and molecular aspects of the disease.

Methods:

A review of the literature in English and in Spanish was carried out, in the PubMed website and using the search engine of Google Scholar, for articles published in the last five years. We performed analysis and summary of the reviewed bibliography.

Development:

In chronic lymphoid leukemia, frequent cytogenetic alterations are present such as deletion of chromosomes 13q, 11q and 17p, as well as trisomy 12, which together with the knowledge of the mutational status of the gene for the variable region of the immunoglobulin heavy chain and other somatic mutations in different genes, as well as clinical and laboratory variables allows prognostic stratification of patients.

Conclusions:

Diagnosis through conventional mitogen-stimulated cytogenetic studies, fluorescence in situ hybridization and gene sequencing allow a better understanding of the biology of the disease, as well as making more personalized therapeutic decisions.

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