THURSDAY, July 13, 2023 (HealthDay News) — For adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), overweight/obese body mass index (BMI) is associated with worse outcomes, according to a study published online July 11 in Blood Advances.

Shai Shimony, M.D., from Tel Aviv University in Israel, and colleagues examined the impact of BMI on outcomes of 388 AYAs aged 15 to 50 years with ALL treated on Dana-Farber Consortium regimens from 2008 to 2021. Overall, 207 participants and 181 participants had normal BMI and overweight/obese BMI, respectively.

The researchers found that patients with overweight/obese BMI had higher nonrelapse mortality (four-year: 11.7 versus 2.8 percent), worse event-free survival (four-year: 77.63 versus 63.77 percent), and worse overall survival (OS; four-year: 64 versus 83 percent). Separate analyses were conducted among those aged 15 to 29 years, who more often had normal BMI (79 versus 20 percent). Younger and older (30 to 50 years) AYAs with normal BMI had excellent OS (four-year: 83 and 85 percent, respectively). However, among AYAs with overweight/obese BMI, OS was worse in older AYAs (four-year: 55 versus 73 percent). AYAs with overweight/obese BMI had higher rates of grade III/IV hepatotoxicity and hyperglycemia, but the rates of hypertriglyceridemia were comparable. Higher BMI was associated with worse OS in multivariable analysis.

“Moving forward, we hope that measures of obesity will be considered a vital variable in determining the most suitable treatment regimens for each individual patient,” Shimony said in a statement.

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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