Clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of bone lymphomas: focus on the clinical significance of multifocal bone involvement by primary bone large B-cell lymphomas

BACKGROUND: Malignant bone lymphoma can be classified as primary (PBL) or secondary (SBL) bone lymphoma. However, the clinico-pathological characteristics and prognostic factors of PBL versus SBL have not yet been well defined. Whether lymphoma with multifocal bone involvement should be considered as stage IV PBL or SBL still remain controversial throughout the literature. METHODS: In this study, we retrospectively reviewed 127 patients with bone lymphoma diagnosed from1998 to 2013 at the Moffitt Cancer Center. Patients were classified as PBL (81 cases) and SBL (46 cases) using the 2013 WHO Classification of Bone/Soft Tissue Tumors and PBL patients were further subdivided into: 1) PBL with unifocal bone disease (uPBL, 46 cases), 2) PBL with multifocal bone involvement (mPBL, 35 cases). Patient characteristics, survival, and prognostic factors were analyzed. RESULTS: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) was the most common histological subtype in all three groups (37/46 of uPBL, 23/35 of mPBL, 23/46 of SBL). B symptoms, lymph node involvement, and bone marrow involvement were found to be more common in mPB-DLBCL and SB-DLBCL groups than in the uPB-DLBCL group. Femur was found to be the most common affected site in uPB-DLBCL patients, while spine was most commonly involved in the other two groups. Survival analysis indicated that uPBL-DLBCL patients had a significantly better progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) than those in the other two groups (P < 0.05). We also found by univariate analysis that multifocality, and stage IV were significantly poor prognostic factors for both PFS and OS in PBL patients. Using multivariate analysis, multifocality remained an independent prognostic factor for both PFS and OS (P = 0.0117, RR: 3.789, 95% CI: 1.275-11.256). CONCLUSION: Overall, our results suggest that mPBL is more similar to SBL in characteristics and survival rather than uPBL, and thus should be better classified and treated as SBL. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2407-14-900) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.