Clinical significance of the cachexia index in patients with small cell lung cancer

Cancer cachexia worsens the treatment outcomes of patients with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). However, no reliable biomarker of cancer cachexia is yet known.

We retrospectively evaluated male SCLC patients who received induction chemotherapy or concurrent chemoradiotherapy. The cachexia index (CXI) was calculated as skeletal muscle index × serum albumin level (g/dL)/neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio. The CXI cutoff according to tumor stage was determined based on a time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve, and all patients were divided into low- and high-CXI groups.

Of 267 patients, 83 and 24 patients with limited-stage disease (LD) and 123 and 37 patients with extensive-stage disease (ED) were assigned to the high- and low-CXI groups, respectively. Only one of 24 patients (4.2%) with LD in the low-CXI group achieved a complete response (CR), whereas 30 of 83 patients (36.1%) with LD in the high-CXI group achieved CRs (p = 0.004). More low-CXI patients required early discontinuation of treatment because of treatment-related toxicity compared to the high-CXI patients (37.5% vs. 16.9%, respectively, p = 0.030, for LD patients; 27.0% vs. 11.4%, respectively, p = 0.019, for ED patients). The median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were significantly shorter in the low-CXI group than the high-CXI group (6.3 vs. 11.1 months and 7.5 vs. 20.6 months, respectively, both p <  0.001 for LD patients; 2.9 vs. 6.3 months and 5.8 vs. 12.8 months, respectively, both p <  0.001, for ED patients). On multivariate analysis, low-CXI status was an independent poor prognostic factor for both PFS and OS regardless of the tumor stage.

A low CXI was associated with treatment intolerance, poor treatment response rate, and poor prognosis in SCLC.