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Insufficiency linked to inferior event-free and overall survival in non-Hodgkins subtypes
TUESDAY, Aug. 17
In patients with two non-Hodgkin‘s lymphoma subtypes, vitamin D insufficiency is associated with inferior overall survival (OS) as well as inferior event-free survival (EFS), according to a study published online Aug. 16 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
In a prospective cohort of 983 newly diagnosed patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Matthew T. Drake, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues assessed whether or not circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels were predictive of EFS and OS.
Within 120 days of diagnosis, the investigators found that 44 percent of patients had insufficient 25(OH)D levels (<25 ng/mL). In addition, 404 events and 193 deaths (168 from lymphoma) occurred during a median follow-up of 34.8 months. After adjustment for known prognostic factors and treatment, 25(OH)D insufficient patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and those with T-cell lymphoma had inferior EFS (hazard ratios [HRs], 1.41 and 1.94, respectively). These two groups also had inferior OS (HRs, 1.99 and 2.38, respectively).
There were no associations between EFS and other non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma subtypes.
“At this time, there is no definitive evidence for a causative relationship between lower vitamin D levels and poorer outcomes in lymphoma, and our study did not answer the question of whether normalizing vitamin D levels in these patients improves outcome,” the authors write.
http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/reprint/JCO.2010.28.6674v1
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