ALBERT

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

Description: INTRODUCTION: Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) is an aggressive 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, Western Africa, the Caribbean basin and South America. Cutaneous signs of ATLL are varied and may consist of macules (M), plaques (P), multiple papules (MP), tumoral nodules (TN), erythroderma (E) or mixed-lesions (≥2 predominant lesions, ML). M and P forms are believed to carry a better prognosis. However, data on cutaneous presentation of ATLL remains scarce. Herein, we report cases of ATLL with cutaneous involvement diagnosed in 4 Latin American countries over the last 3 decades. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed patients (pts) diagnosed with ATLL between January 1995 and December 2019. ATLL subtypes were classified according to the Shimoyama criteria into acute, lymphomatous, chronic and smoldering. Primary cutaneous tumoral (PCT) variant was classified according to the 2019 International Revised ATLL Consensus. We designed 2 cohorts: the first, ATLL pts with cutaneous involvement, and the second, matched cases without cutaneous involvement. We determined the type of skin lesion as well as the survival associated with the various types of skin lesions. We compared the frequency of clinical features using Fisher's exact test. 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. We analyzed survival data according to ATLL subtype, cutaneous involvement status, and type of skin lesion using the Kaplan-Meier method and Log rank test. RESULTS: A total of 169 pts with ATLL were identified; 63 had cutaneous involvement and 106 did not. Clinical features are shown in Table 1. In both groups the median age was 57 years with a female predominance. Cutaneous involvement was most frequently found in acute (41%) and lymphomatous (37%) ATLL pts. The E (24%) and P (22 %) types were the most frequent skin lesions. Disease stage, presence of B symptoms, hypercalcemia, ECOG ≥2, elevated LDH, and IPI/ PIT score were not different among groups. Table 2 and Table 3 summarize the first-line therapy used and response rates. The use of first-line zidovudine plus interferon alpha (AZT-IFN), regardless of the type of skin lesion, resulted in relatively high response rates [overall response (OR) 100%, n=8; CR 62.5%] as compared to multi agent-chemotherapy (OR 33.3%, n=12). Overall, the presence of cutaneous involvement was associated with better overall survival (OS) compared to non-cutaneous involvement (aHR 0.55 [95% CI: 0.37-0.82], p