EHA 2016

Clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of plasmablastic lymphoma patients

Dr Emmanuelle Tchernonog - CHRU Montpellier, Montpellier, France

I will present the largest reported survey on plasmablastic lymphoma with 135 cases from the LYSA group, the French and Belgian group. It’s a rare disease, few described.

Can you tell us more about the plasmablastic lymphoma?

Yes, the survey provided a new future on plasmablastic lymphoma in clinical, biological and radiological data. Notably it described better the target populations with 42% HIV positive that is less than usually reported. We have found among the non-HIV, non-transplanted patients other patients with an immune disorder already described, for example auto-immune disorder, older patients, patients with a history of malignancy. But for the first time we have described a new subtype of patients, that was patients with a localised lymphoma and localised inflammatory chronic sites. For example, with a localised skin lymphoma.

Were there any associated biomarkers with this new subgroup?

Biomarkers, it’s a specificity, it’s an immunological feature with negativity of CD20 and positivity of plasma cell markers so it overlaps with plasma cell myeloma.

What were the outcomes for the therapy?

The outcome is poor with a median overall survival of 32 months. However it was a little better than usually described. Concerning prognostic markers there were chemotherapies achieving complete response that has also been described but we also have found HIV positive status that was associated with a better overall survival probably because their counterpart is more older and more comorbid and the possibility to restore immunity in these patients.

How could other doctors use this research?

This research, for the treatment chemotherapy is needed because in some case reports they tried to restore immunity by anti-retroviral therapy alone or rituximab alone against Epstein-Barr virus infected but we have shown that without chemotherapy patients did not respond and died from the lymphoma.

That is all the questions that I have here, is there anything else that you would like to say?

Just for the target population usually describes that sort of patient are immuno-competent. We have found that among the immuno-competent patients at first site when regarding there was less than 5% of immuno-competent patients challenging the real existence of immuno-competent patients in this disease.