African American and Caucasian patients with Sézary syndrome have no differences in outcomes at an ethnically diverse urban medical center

Abstract

Sézary syndrome (SS) is an aggressive cutaneous T-cell lymphoma with poor survival. We performed a retrospective review of SS patients at Emory University from 1990 to 2020. We collected data on race, clinical characteristics, therapy, and social determinants of health. Clinical endpoints were overall survival (OS) and time to next treatment (TTNT). Univariate association and multivariable analyses were assessed by Cox proportional hazards models. Among 62 patients, 45.2% were AA. The median OS and TTNT were 3.1 years and 6.3 months, respectively, with no difference by race. AA patients had a higher median baseline LDH (360 vs. 232, p = 0.002) and a longer delay in initiation of systemic therapy compared to CC patients (3.17 vs. 2.14 months, p = 0.039), but a shorter commute (<10 miles) and no difference in insurance coverage (p = 0.260). AA patients at an academic center had unique clinical features and treatment patterns, but similar survival to CC SS patients.

Keywords:

• Mycosis fungoides
• Sézary syndrome
• extracorporeal photopheresis
• African American
• racial disparities

Ethical approval

This study was reviewed and approved by IRB; approval # 0001489.

Presentations

Data presented in this manuscript were published as an abstract at the 2020 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

Disclosure statement

DJM, SG, and JS report no conflicts, MJL reports advisory board and honorarium from Kyowa Kirin, and PBA reports advisory board and research funding from Kyowa Kirin.

Data availability statement

Data were available within the article or its supplementary materials.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported in part by the Biostatistics Shared Resource of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and NIH/NCI under award number P30CA138292. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The American College of Surgeons and the Commission on Cancer have not verified and are not responsible for the analytic or statistical methodology employed, or the conclusions are drawn from these data by the investigator.