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Pre-treatment lymphopenia and indication of tumor-induced systemic immunosuppression in medulloblastoma

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Abstract

The presence of tumor-induced systemic immune suppression, including lymphopenia, has been recognized in adult patients with glioblastoma for several decades, and pre-treatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte count ratio (NLCR) is associated with inferior clinical outcome in patients with glioblastoma. Whether tumor-induced systemic immune suppression is also present in children with malignant brain tumors is not known. We performed a retrospective analysis of pretreatment neutrophil and lymphocyte counts in pediatric patients with medulloblastoma (MB) compared to a control group of children with posterior fossa pilocytic astrocytoma (PA). Compared to the control group, we observed statistically significantly lower absolute lymphocyte counts (ALCs) and higher NLCRs in the medulloblastoma group. Our findings suggest the presence of tumor-induced systemic immune suppression in MB patients already present at the time of diagnosis, with potential implications for the development of immune therapies in this population.

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Acknowledgements

The study was in part supported by grants from the Making Headway Foundation and Sohn Conference Foundation to M.S. and M.A.K. This research was funded in part through the NIH/NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA008748 to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Seema Patel & Shiyang Wang

  2. Department of Pathology, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Matija Snuderl

  3. Department of Pediatrics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, Box 234, New York, NY, 10065, USA

    Matthias A. Karajannis

Authors
  1. Seema Patel
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  2. Shiyang Wang
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  3. Matija Snuderl
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  4. Matthias A. Karajannis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthias A. Karajannis.

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Ethical approval

The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of NYU Langone Medical Center and was performed in accordance with institutional policies.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Patel, S., Wang, S., Snuderl, M. et al. Pre-treatment lymphopenia and indication of tumor-induced systemic immunosuppression in medulloblastoma. J Neurooncol 136, 541–544 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-017-2678-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-017-2678-3

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