title: Pretreatment T lymphocyte numbers are contributing to the prognostic significance of absolute lymphocyte numbers in B-cell non-Hodgkins lymphomas.
abstract: Targeted immuno-chemotherapy resulted in greatly improved survival of B cell lymphoma patients. Several prognostic markers are investigated, amongst them the pretreatment absolute lymphocyte numbers. We investigated lymphocyte subpopulations and correlated this data with prognosis of patients. 88 patients (mean age: 56 years, 18-88, median follow up 32 months) with B cell lymphomas were investigated. There were 51 DLBCL, 16 Follicular NHL, 4 MALT, 7 Marginal Zone NHL, 10 Small lymphocytic cases were investigated. Our data showed that overall survival was statistically significant up to the 0.9 G/l absolute lymphocyte numbers as dividers between the subgroups. The CD19+ B cell numbers, or the CD56+/CD3- NK cell numbers did not represent any significant differences between subgroups. However CD3+, CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were differentiating statistically significant subgroups. Pretreatment CD3+ cell number less than 700/ul and CD8+ cell number less than 200/ul were corresponding with significantly inferior overall survival. These could be verified in the bad prognostic IPI group as well. Our data further support the importance of pretreatment lymphocyte numbers and highlight CD3+ and CD8+ lymphocytes to be the key factors in predicting outcome.
authors.affiliation: 3rd Department of Internal Medicine, Institute of Internal Medicine, DEOEC, University of Debrecen, Moricz zs Krt 22, 4032 Debrecen, Hungary. lgergely@iiibel.dote.hu
authors.forename: Lajos
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gergely
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Váncsa
authors.forename: Zsófia
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Miltényi
authors.forename: Zsófia
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Simon
authors.forename: Sándor
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baráth
authors.forename: Árpád
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Illés
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002452:Cell Count; D002469:Cell Separation; D005260:Female; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D006801:Humans; D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate; D016393:Lymphoma, B-Cell / Q000097:blood* / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D016176:T-Lymphocyte Subsets / Q000276:immunology*; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D055815:Young Adult