Publication Date:
2020-11-05
Description:
INTRODUCTION: Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) is a mature peripheral T-cell neoplasm caused by the Human T-cell Leukemia Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1). HTLV-1 infects up to 10 million people worldwide and is most endemic in Southwestern Japan, the Caribbean basin, South America, and Western Africa. In Latin America (LA), Peru and Brazil have the highest prevalence of HTLV-1-related diseases, however, data on ATLL in other LA countries is scarce. ATLL carries a dismal prognosis and is essentially incurable by conventional drugs. We describe the epidemiology, clinical features, treatment, and disease outcome of ATLL encountered in 11 countries in LA. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed patients (pts) diagnosed with ATLL between January 1995 and December 2019. ATLL cases were classified according to the Shimoyama criteria into acute (A), lymphomatous (L), chronic (C) and smoldering (S). Treatment approaches used as first-line therapy were: 1) chemotherapy alone; 2) combined chemotherapy with zidovudine/interferon-alpha (AZT-IFN); and 3) AZT-IFN alone, as previously done with Miami cohort (Malpica and Ramos et al. Blood Advances 2018). Treatment response was assessed according to Tsukasaki et al. (JCO 2009) criteria. To be classified as complete response (CR), partial response and stable disease, these had to persist for a period of at least 4 weeks. Survival curves were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and Log rank test. RESULTS: A total of 253 pts with ATLL were identified. Two hundred twenty six pts (L=122, A=73, C=26, S=5) had sufficient data for analysis. Demographic and clinical features are shown in Figure 1 and Table 1. Median age at diagnosis was 57 years, with a female predominance in A (58%) and S (100%) types. Most ATLL pts were from Peru (n=159, 63%) followed by Chile (n=44, 17%), Argentina (n=20, 8%) and Colombia (n=17, 7%). B symptoms were high present in A, L and C types (73%, 72%, 58% vs. 8% S type, respectively, p=0.011). Hypercalcemia was highly associated with A type (57% vs. L 27%, p=0.014). The PIT score yielded to a more aggressive risk classification compared to the IPI score (high-risk: 55% vs. 29%, respectively, p
Print ISSN:
0006-4971
Electronic ISSN:
1528-0020
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
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