Prognostic significance of bone marrow infiltration detected by PET-CT in newly diagnosed diffuse large B cell lymphoma

The aim of this study was to examine the prognostic value of bone marrow involvement (BMI) assessed by baseline PET-CT (PET(0)-BMI) in treatment-naïve patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). All patients from a single centre diagnosed as DLBCL between 2005 and 2014 had data extracted from staging PET-CT (PET(0)-CT), bone marrow biopsy (BMB), and treatment records. The PET(3)-CT (PET-CT scan after cycle 3 of immunochemotherapy) was performed on all the patients with PET(0)-BMI positivity (PET(0)-BMI(+)). Of 169 patients, 20 (11.8%) had BMI on BMB, whereas 35 (20.7%) were PET(0)-BMI positive. Among PET(0)-BMI(+) patients, patients with maximum of standard uptake value (SUVmax) of bone marrow (SUVmax(BM)) more than 8.6 were significantly associated with high IPI score (3–5) (P=0.002), worse progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) (P=0.025 and P=0.002, respectively). In the 68 stage IV cases, 3-year OS was higher in the patients with negative PET(0)-BMI (PET(0)-BMI(−)) than that with PET(0)-BMI(+) (84.2%±6.5% vs. 44.1%±8.6%; P=0.003), while 3-year PFS only shown a trend of statistic significance (P=0.077) between the two groups. Among the 69 patients of inter-risk of IPI (2–3), patients with PET(0)-BMI(+) had significantly inferior PFS and OS than that with PET(0)-BMI(−) (P=0.009 and P<0.001, respectively). The cut-off value of the decreased percentage of SUVmax(BM) between PET(0)-CT and PET(3)-CT (ΔSUVmax(BM)) was 70.0%, which can predict PFS (P=0.003) and OS (P=0.023). These data confirmed that along with the increased sensitivity and accuracy of identifying bone marrow by PET-CT, novel prognostic values of marrow involvement were found in patients with DLBCL.