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Clinical Nutrition

Effect of body mass index on overall survival of patients with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 71, pages 750–754 (2017)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

The present work was performed to investigate the association between body mass index (BMI) before transplantation and the overall survival (OS) of patients with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT).

Subjects/Methods:

Data from 310 adults who were diagnosed with acute leukemia and underwent allo-HSCT between March 2001 and December 2011 were analyzed. According to the suggested BMI categories for Asian population, patients with BMIs of ⩾23 and ⩾25 kg/m2 were identified as overweight and obese, respectively. Cox proportional hazards models was used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Results:

The median follow-up time among the patients was 19.7 months (interquartile range=8.1–37.7). A total of 93 (34.8%) people died within the follow-up period. After adjusting for the potential confounders, normal-weight, overweight and obese patients showed significantly lower HRs than those of underweight patients, with a significant trend of OS improvement upon increasing BMI (P=0.019). Overweight and obese patients survived longer, with a significantly decreased HR by ~40% (HR=0.60; 95% CI: 0.38–0.95) compared with underweight and normal-weight patients.

Conclusions:

An increased OS was seen in allo-HSCT patients with BMI⩾23 kg/m2 compared to those with lower BMI. Further work are still needed to investigate of the effects of BMI or body composition on the survival of allo-HSCT patients.

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of Department of Hematology for excellent work.

Author information

Author notes

  1. J Yang and S-L Xue: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Nutrition, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    J Yang

  2. Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Public Health, Soochow University, Dushu Lake Higher Education Town, Suzhou, China

    J Yang & L-Q Qin

  3. Department of Hematology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    S-L Xue, X Zhang, Y-N Zhou & D-P Wu

  4. Hematopoietic Transplant Institute, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    S-L Xue, X Zhang, Y-N Zhou & D-P Wu

  5. Jiangsu Institute of Hematology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    S-L Xue, X Zhang, Y-N Zhou & D-P Wu

  6. Collaborative Innovation Center of Hematology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    S-L Xue, X Zhang, Y-N Zhou & D-P Wu

  7. Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

    Y-P Shen

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Correspondence to Y-P Shen or D-P Wu.

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Yang, J., Xue, SL., Zhang, X. et al. Effect of body mass index on overall survival of patients with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Eur J Clin Nutr 71, 750–754 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2016.225

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