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Predicting non-relapse mortality following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation during first remission of acute myeloid leukemia

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive system for predicting non-relapse mortality after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) during first complete remission (CR) of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). After dividing 2344 eligible patients randomly into a training set and a validation set, we first identified and scored five parameters, that is, age, sex, performance status, HCT-comorbidity index (HCT-CI), and donor type, on the basis of their impact on non-relapse mortality for patients in the training set. The non-relapse mortality-J (NRM-J) index using the sum of these scores was then applied to patients in the validation set, resulting in a clear differentiation of non-relapse mortality, with expected 2-year rates of 11%, 16%, 27%, and 33%, respectively (P < 0.001). The estimated c-statistic was 0.67, which was significantly higher than that of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation score (0.60, P = 0.002) and the HCT-CI (0.57, P < 0.001). The NRM-J index showed a significant association with overall survival, but not with relapse. Our findings demonstrate that the NRM-J index is useful for predicting post-transplant non-relapse mortality for patients with AML in first CR, for whom the decision of whether to perform allogeneic HCT is critical.

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Fig. 1: Cumulative incidences of non-relapse mortality based on the sum of points assigned to patients in the training set.
Fig. 2: Cumulative incidences of non-relapse mortality based on the NRM-J index for patients in the validation set.
Fig. 3: Kaplan–Meier estimates of overall survival based on the NRM-J index for patients in the validation set.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by a grant from the Practical Research Project for Allergic Diseases and Immunology (Research Technology of Medical Transplantation) from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), grant number: 18ek0510023h0002, and a grant from the Aichi Cancer Research Foundation, grant number: 2019–8.

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Correspondence to Masamitsu Yanada.

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Yanada, M., Konuma, T., Mizuno, S. et al. Predicting non-relapse mortality following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation during first remission of acute myeloid leukemia. Bone Marrow Transplant 56, 387–394 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-020-01032-9

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