Abstract
Purpose
To investigate the clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTCL).
Methods
We retrospectively reviewed 410 NKTCL patients admitted to our lymphoma center from 2000 to 2019. Overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were estimated with the Kaplan–Meier method, and the differences between the study groups were compared by the log-rank test.
Results
The median age of the 410 patients was 44 (range 8–84), and the 5-year OS and PFS were 61.2% and 38.4%, respectively. For patients with stage I/II, the 5-year PFS rate was 57.5%, and the 5-year OS rate was 77.2%. For patients with stage III/IV, the 5-year PFS rate was 17.4%, and the 5-year OS rate was 43.7%. Compared to the patients who received radiotherapy alone or chemotherapy alone as their initial treatment, the patients who received combined chemoradiotherapy had longer PFS (P = 0.013). Independent prognostic factors for OS were stage III/IV (P = 0.001), elevated IPI/aaIPI score (P = 0.019), elevated PINK score (P < 0.001) and elevated plasma EBV-DNA (P = 0.003). An elevated PINK score (P < 0.001) was an independent prognostic factor for PFS.
Conclusion
Stage III/IV, elevated IPI/aaIPI score, elevated PINK score and elevated plasma EBV-DNA were independent prognostic factors for OS. Elevated PINK score was an independent prognostic factor for PFS. In stage III/IV patients, the patients who received combined chemoradiotherapy had significantly longer PFS.
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Data availability statement
Only publicly available data were used in this study, and data sources and handling of these data are described in the Materials and Methods. Further information is available from the corresponding author upon request.
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The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this study was supported by National Science and Technology Major Project of China (Grant No. 2020ZX09201-009), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81970184).
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Sun, Z., Wan, W., Zhang, X. et al. The clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of 410 patients with natural killer/T-cell lymphoma. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 148, 3449–3459 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-022-04203-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-022-04203-x