Prognostic factors in 194 patients with chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis

The prognostic factors of chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis remain unclear. We assessed the prognostic factors of all-cause mortality in patients with chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis, focusing especially on underlying pulmonary disease, first-line treatment and host predisposition.

We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of 194 patients negative for HIV who had chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis treated at our institution in Saitama, Japan.

The patients (median age, 68.5 years) were followed over a median follow-up time of 2.6 years. The underlying pulmonary diseases consisted of previous pulmonary tuberculosis in 59 (30.4%) patients, emphysema in 39 (20.1%) patients, interstitial lung disease in 32 (16.5%) patients, nontuberculous mycobacteriosis in 29 (14.9%) patients and other diseases in 35 (18%) patients. The first-line treatments included observation in 65 (33.5%) patients, itraconazole in 56 (28.9%) patients, micafungin in 46 (23.7%) patients, voriconazole in 22 (11.3%) patients and amphotericin B (including liposomal amphotericin B) in five (2.6%) patients. The overall cumulative mortality rate was 50.2% at five years and 67.4% at 10 years. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard modeling found an older age, the presence of systemic comorbidities, baseline corticosteroid use, a body mass index of <18.5 kg/m(2) and a C-reactive protein level of ≥5.0 mg/dL to be negative prognostic factors for all-cause mortality.

The 5-year mortality rate of chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis was 50.2%. When clinical trials are designed and implemented to test effective drug therapies in patients with chronic necrotizing pulmonary aspergillosis, the trial patients should be stratified according to these prognostic factors prior to randomization.