Baseline IgM Amounts Can Identify Patients with Poor Outcomes: Results from a Real-Life Single-Center Study on Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma

• Published in: Cancers 2024-02, Vol.16 (4), p.826
• Main Authors: Duminuco, Andrea, Santuccio, Gabriella, Chiarenza, Annalisa, Figuera, Amalia, Motta, Giovanna, Caruso, Anastasia Laura, Petronaci, Alessandro, Ippolito, Massimo, Cerchione, Claudio, Di Raimondo, Francesco, Romano, Alessandra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: B cells; Blood; Chemotherapy; Clinical trials; Development and progression; Diagnosis; Disease; Hodgkin's lymphoma; Immunoglobulin M; Immunoglobulins; Immunoregulation; Inflammation; Lymphoma; Medical prognosis; Multivariate analysis; Myeloid cells; Neutrophils; Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas; Patient outcomes; Patients; Radiation therapy; Risk assessment; Software; Stem cells; Tomography; Transplants & implants; Vincristine
• ISSN: 2072-6694; 2072-6694
• DOI: 10.3390/cancers16040826

Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) is characterized by an inflammatory background in which the reactive myeloid cells may exert an immune-suppressive effect related to the progression of the disease. Immunoglobulin M is the first antibody isotype produced during an immune response, which also plays an immunoregulatory role. Therefore, we investigated if, as a surrogate of defective B cell function, it could have any clinical impact on prognosis. In this retrospective, observational, single-center study, we evaluated 212 newly diagnosed HL patients, including 132 advanced-stage. A 50 mg/dL level of IgM at baseline resulted in 84.1% sensitivity and 45.5% specificity for predicting a complete response in the whole cohort (area under curve (AUC) = 0.62, = 0.013). In multivariate analysis, baseline IgM ≤ 50 mg/dL and the presence of a large nodal mass (