Systemic or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) treatment of HIV-positive lymphoma patients resulted in improved outcomes, compared with nonsystemic treatment, according to the results of a large database study.
Researchers Thejus T. Jayakrishnan, MD, and colleagues examined patients with lymphoma diagnosed between 2004 and 2015 from the National Cancer Database. Patients were categorized as HIV positive and HIV negative. First-line lymphoma treatment was categorized as no systemic therapy reported, systemic therapy, or HSCT. Multivariate analysis was used to predict treatment and survival, according to Dr. Jayakrishnan, a resident at the department of internal medicine, Allegheny Health Network, Pittsburgh.
A total of 11,160 HIV-positive vs. 349,607 HIV-negative patients were analyzed, including mostly men, with a comorbidity index of 0. The most common lymphoma among HIV-positive patients was diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, according to the report in Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma & Leukemia.
Among HIV-positive patients, 792 had no systemic treatment, 10,328 underwent systemic treatment, and 40 received HSCT treatment. The results showed that treatment of HIV-positive lymphoma patients resulted in improved outcomes: 3-year overall survival was 43.6% for nonsystemic treatment versus 58.1% for systemic (hazard ratio, 0.56; 95% confidence interval, 0.52-0.61; P < .005) versus 62.2% for HSCT therapy (HR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.14-1.3; P = .08), the lack of significance in the latter could be caused in part by the small number of patients treated. Outcomes for both treatment regimens were lower, however, compared with non-HIV patients.
“The present study demonstrates improvement in survival outcomes for HIV-positive patients with lymphoma with treatments when feasible, but these outcomes are poor when compared to HIV-negative patients,” the researchers concluded.
The authors reported that they had no conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Jayakrishnan TT et al. Clin Lymph Myeloma Leuk. 2020 Feb 20. doi: 10.1016/j.clml.2020.06.003.