Clinical Significance of Prognostic Nutritional Index for Patients with Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma.

To analyze the clinical characteristics and prognostic value of prognostic nutritional index (PNI) for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) treated in the rituximab era, baseline clinical and disease characteristics were recorded in our hospital. Concentration of T-helper cell type (Th1/Th2/Th17) cytokine profiles were measured by flow cytometry. DLBCL patients were classified into low and high PNI group based on the cutoff value as previously reported. Clinical features and survivals were compared between high and low group. In all, 114 (37%) out of 309 patients were classified as low PNI group. The low group had lower levels of albumin, hemoglobin and lymphocyte counts, and older age, and high lactate dehydroxygenase (LDH), and high frequencies of advanced stage, poor performance status, B symptoms, extranodal involvement, and higher level of interferon gamma (INF-γ). Low PNI was associated with poor overall survival (OS) in univariate analyses. But these significances did not stand in the paired patients matched by the well-established prognostic factors. In parallel, there was no significance between survival and PNI in the multivariate analyses. PNI was closely correlated with the well-established prognostic factors for DLBCL patients and was not an independent prognostic factor in our study.