Serum nm23-H1 protein as a prognostic factor for indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Standard chemotherapy has been ineffective for improving the poor 10-year survival rate of patients with indolent lymphoma. However, a wider choice of therapeutic modalities has become recently available, including immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies and allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation. Accordingly, a sensitive prognostic indicator is required to identify high-risk patients and to help design new therapeutic approaches for them. We previously reported that the serum nm23-H1 protein level was an independent prognostic factor for aggressive lymphoma. The present study was performed to assess the clinical implications of this protein on indolent lymphoma and whether it can be used to classify the aggressiveness of the disease in order to assist in the individualization of therapy. A total of 130 patients with indolent lymphoma were enrolled in this multicenter study. The serum nm23-H1 protein level was significantly higher in patients with indolent lymphoma than in a normal control group. In addition, indolent lymphoma patients with higher nm23-H1 levels had worse overall and progression-free survival rate than those with lower nm23-H1 levels. Therefore, nm23-H1 in serum may be useful for identifying a distinct group of patients at high risk.