Ultra-high level of serum soluble interleukin-2 receptor at diagnosis predicts poor outcome for angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma

Abstract

Angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (AITL) is a rare subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and displays an aggressive clinical course with poor outcome. To identify prognostic factors for AITL, we retrospectively analyzed 36 patients with AITL. The median age was 74 years with 83% of the patients having advanced stage. Eighty-three percent received CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisolone)-like chemotherapies, resulting in an overall response rate of 63%. With a median follow-up of 9 years, the estimated overall survival at 5 years was 33.3%. Median serum level of soluble interleukin-2 receptor (sIL-2R) was 5615 U/mL at diagnosis, and over 10 000 U/mL of sIL-2R was identified as a significant poor prognostic factor, independent of the International Prognostic Index, Prognostic Index for peripheral T-cell lymphoma and Prognostic index for AITL (hazard ratio [HR], 4.42; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.49–13.11; log-rank, p < 0.01). Our study shows that an ultra-high level of serum sIL-2R at diagnosis is a significant poor prognostic biomarker for AITL.

Keywords::

• Angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma
• peripheral T-cell lymphoma
• non-Hodgkin lymphoma
• soluble interleukin-2 receptor
• prognostic factor

Acknowledgement

This work was in part supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Tokyo, Japan; Grant Number 25860775 to S.S.), a Health and Labor Science Research Grant (T.T.) and the Uehara Memorial Foundation (T.T.).

Potential conflict of interest

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Supplementary material available online

Supplementary Figure 1 and Table I showing further results