Prognostic Role of IL-6 in POEMS Syndrome

• Published in: Blood 2021-11, Vol.138 (Supplement 1), p.2700-2700
• Main Authors: Omar, Maryam, Warsame, Rahma M, Gertz, Morie A., Buadi, Francis K., Go, Ronald, Kumar, Shaji, Dingli, David, Kyle, Robert A., Leung, Nelson, Kourelis, Taxiarchis, Hayman, Suzanne R., Lin, Yi, Lacy, Martha Q., Lust, John A., Hwa, Yi L., Fonder, Amie, Kapoor, Prashant, Hobbs, Miriam A., Gonsalves, Wilson I, Rajkumar, S. Vincent, Muchtar, Eli, Visram, Alissa, Russell, Stephen J., Dispenzieri, Angela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0006-4971; 1528-0020
• DOI: 10.1182/blood-2021-149792

INTRODUCTION POEMS syndrome is a paraneoplastic disorder that results in multi-organ disease, and Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is associated with disease activity. There is evidence that the cytokine Interleukin- 6 (IL-6) stimulates VEGF production in several cancer cell lines. It has also been suggested that patients with POEMS syndrome experience symptoms improvement when IL-6 levels are low. Our study aims to understand the role of IL-6 and whether it is a contributor to disease activity in POEMS syndrome. METHODS We conducted a retrospective study of patients (pts) seen at Mayo Clinic within 1 year of diagnosis for POEMS syndrome with an IL-6 level within 3 months of diagnosis between 01/01/2011-05/31/2021 were included. Our database comprised 358 pts,7 were excluded because did not have official diagnosis of POEMS syndrome. Two hundred and ninety-nine pts did not have IL-6 testing within 90 days of diagnosis and were excluded. Clinical data was abstracted from our electronic medical record. Descriptive statistics were used for IL-6 levels. The majority of IL-6 laboratory testing for pts utilized the same reference range. A minority of pts had alternate reference ranges; thus, all IL-6 values and reference ranges were fold-corrected to have a unified reference to determine elevation in IL-6. High IL-6 was considered any value above the normal range, also analyzed pts in quartiles and deciles. Hematologic, VEGF and PET response criteria were utilized to group pts into responders or non-responders. Time to progression (TTP) and overall survival (OS) was calculated using the Kaplan Meier method. Differences between curves were by log rank. Statistical analysis was conducted via JMP software package (SAS, Cary, NC, USA). Univariate analysis was done to determine the prognostic value of IL-6. Statistical significance is considered with p-values