Overweight as a prognostic factor in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Gelelete, Cristina B; Pereira, Sandra H; Azevedo, Alice Maria B; Thiago, Leandro S; Mundim, Mariana; Land, Marcelo G P; Costa, Elaine S · Obesity (Silver Spring) · 2011

retrospective_cohort · Level III

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Abstract

Our purpose was to investigate the prognostic impact of overweight/obesity in 5-year event-free survival (EFS) in a cohort of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). We retrospectively analyzed 181 newly diagnosed ALL children enrolled between 1990 and 2009 and treated with Berlin-Frankfurt-Munich (BFM) protocols. The majority of children in our cohort were <10 years-old. Our data clearly indicated that overweight/obesity is an independent predictor of relapse risk, mainly in the intermediate- and high-risk groups (HR) of children. These results could be explained by changes in the chemotherapy pharmacokinetics in overweight/obese patients and by the antiapoptotic effects in leukemic cells caused by adipocytes.

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