Single-center retrospective study of association between body mass index and prognosis in pediatric high-grade mature B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma

There is a lack of information on prognostic factors for children and adolescents (age < 18 years) with high-grade mature B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (HG B-NHL). A retrospective study at Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China) investigated the prognostic role of body mass index at diagnosis among these patients. Among 435 patients, 10.8% were underweight, 75.6% were normal weight, 10.6% were overweight, and 3.0% were obese. The event-free survival and overall survival rates of the entire cohort at 5 years were 89.3% and 92.4%, respectively. The 5-year EFS rate among obese patients was worse than the 5-year EFS rate among overweight patients (76.2% versus 95.6%; p=0.04), whereas the 5-year OS rate among underweight patients was worse than the 5-year OS rate among normal weight patients (84.5% versus 93.1%; p=0.04) or overweight patients (84.5% versus 97.7%; p=0.03). In multivariate analysis, underweight or obesity was associated with increased risk of death (HR 2.26; p=0.04). The authors conclude that obesity and underweight at diagnosis were associated with poor prognosis in pediatric HG B-NHL.