Clinical significance of galectin-3 in patients with adult acute myeloid leukemia: a retrospective cohort study with long-term follow-up and formulation of risk scoring system

Abstract

Galectin-3 plays an increasingly important role in development and progression of tumor. However, little is known about the clinical impact of galectin-3 in non-acute promyelocytic leukemia (non-M3 AML). Peripheral blood of 298 patients with primary non-M3 AML and 30 normal donors was collected for measurement of galectin-3. Galectin-3 levels were significantly higher compared with the control group (p < .001). Patients with higher galectin-3 levels had lower CR rates (p = .001) and 1-year overall survival (OS) rates (p = .002). The Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that higher galectin-3 levels group had significantly shorter OS. Cox regression model revealed high galectin-3 level was an independent poor prognostic factor. A scoring system incorporating galectin-3 and other prognostic factors (age, WBC, karyotype, NPM1/FLT3-ITD, CEBPA^{double-mutation} and c-KIT, WT1) was formulated to predict prognosis. In conclusion, galectin-3 may be a reliable prognostic marker in AML patients. The multifactorial scoring system was more powerful than a single factor to predict clinical outcome.

Keywords:

• Acute myeloid leukemia
• plasma galectin-3
• prognosis
• overall survival

Acknowledgments

This work was partly supported by Special Provincial Key Clinical Fund of Shandong and Binzhou Medical University Scientific Research Fund [BY2013KJ38].

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2016.1243677.