Effect of initial body mass index on survival outcome of patients with myelodysplastic syndrome: a single-center retrospective study

Abstract

Multiple studies have associated elevated body mass index (BMI) and increased incidence of hematologic malignancies, including myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the association between BMI at diagnosis and overall survival (OS) in a retrospective cohort of 92 patients with MDS. The median age at diagnosis was 63 (14–84) years. The median BMI was 22.75 (15.94–34.26) kg/m². Eleven (12.0%) patients were underweight, 64 (69.6%) were normal weight, 17 (18.5%) were overweight or obese. Three-year OS rates differed significantly when the three BMI groups were compared (p = .0449). Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that normal weight (versus underweight) had a marginally significant effect on OS (hazard ratio = 0.456, p = .127), and overweight/obese (versus underweight) had a significant effect on OS (hazard ratio = 0.171, p = .015). Further investigations are required to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for this association.

Keywords:

• Body mass index
• myelodysplastic syndrome
• prognosis
• survival

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Public Welfare Science and Technology Project of Wenzhou (Nos. Y20160099, Y20150034), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Nos. LQ14H080002, LY12H08002, LY16H080006), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81502793).

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2017.1330477.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Public Welfare Science and Technology Project of Wenzhou (Nos. Y20160099, Y20150034), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Nos. LQ14H080002, LY12H08002, LY16H080006), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81502793).