Differential clinical significance of pre-, interim-, and post-treatment plasma Epstein–Barr virus DNA load in NK/T-cell lymphoma treated with P-GEMOX protocol

Abstract

Circulating EBV-DNA is an accurate biomarker of tumor load in extranodal natural killer (NK)/T cell lymphoma (ENKTL); however, its role in patients treated with P-GEMOX has not been evaluated. In this study, we examined plasma EBV-DNA of 99 patients at different time points by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Multivariate analysis revealed that ECOG PS score, response rate, and post-treatment EBV-DNA level were independent predictors of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Positive post-treatment plasma EBV-DNA was associated with poor OS in ENKTL patients. The 3-year OS for patients with positive pre-, interim-, post-treatment EBV-DNA was significantly lower than that for patients with negative EBV-DNA; the values were 70.2% vs. 93.9% (p = .022), 53.8% vs. 99.1% (p < .001), and 40.6% vs. 91.8% (p < .001), respectively. We conclude that monitoring dynamic changes in plasma EBV-DNA in ENKTL patients treated with P-GEMOX could predict important outcomes such as OS.

Keywords:

• Extranodal NK/T cell lymphoma
• Epstein–Barr virus DNA
• prognosis
• P-GEMOX

Acknowledgements

We thank the patients and their families and all the pathologists and clinicians at the participating departments of SYSUCC for their invaluable contributions to this study.

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2018.1563690.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by National Natural Scientific Research Fund of China [grant number 81500165].