Clinical Characteristics and Survival Analysis of Patients with Plasma Cell Leukemia

Abstract

To investigate the clinical characteristics, therapeutic response and prognosis of patients with plasma cell leukemia (PCL) and improve the understanding of this disease. The clinical manifestations, laboratory tests and treatment response of 27 patients with plasma cell leukemia treated in The Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University from December 2010 to August 2019 were analyzed retrospectively, and their clinical characteristics were summarized. Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis. There were 18 cases of primary plasma cell leukemia (pPCL) and 9 cases of secondary plasma cell leukemia (sPCL). The male to female ratio was 1.7∶1. The median age was 62 years old. The first manifestations were bone pain, fatigue, fever, splenomegaly and bleeding, and a large number of plasma cell infiltration was observed in the morphological examination of peripheral blood and bone marrow cells. 13 cases were detected by immunotyping and all of them expressed CD38/CD138. 8 cases underwent karyotype analysis, and 3 cases were normal, clonal abnormalities occurred in 5 cases. FISH detection was performed in 12 cases, of which 8 cases were abnormal. In 17 cases of bortezomib based chemotherapy, the ovevall response rate was 52.9%, which was higher than that in the non-bortezomib group, but there was no significant difference between the two groups (P =0.242). The overall median survival time of 27 patients was 6.4 months, the median progression-free survival time was 3.5 months, and the median survival time of patients with pPCL and sPCL was 8.2 months and 2.4 months, respectively, the difference between the two groups was statistically significant (P =0.031). PCL is highly invasive and has diverse clinical manifestations, and is not sensitive to traditional chemotherapy. The median survival time of patients with pPCL is relatively longer than that of patients with sPCL. The chemotherapy regimen based on bortezomib improves the treatment effectiveness and prolongs the survival time of PCL patients.