DOES WEIGHT-FOR-HEIGHT HAVE PROGNOSTIC-SIGNIFICANCE IN CHILDREN WITH ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC-LEUKEMIA

Purpose: We tested the hypothesis that weight for height, a simple ind ex of nutritional status, is related to prognosis in childhood acute l ymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Patients and Methods: The study populatio n was composed of 78 children with ALL tested at one U.K. center on th e same protocol (UKALL-X). Outcome measures were relapse/no relapse an d time to first relapse. Influence of weight for height, expressed as standard deviation scores, was tested using survival analysis in a ret rospective design. Results: The weight-for-height standard deviation s core had a significant influence on time until first relapse (log rank s test, p = 0.012), with the highest risk of early relapse in children at the lower end of the weight-for-height distribution. Conclusions: The results suggest that weight for height does have an influence on o utcome in ALL, but the mechanism is unclear and the finding requires c onfirmation by larger scale prospective studies.