Long-Term Quality of Life, Cognitive Function, and Symptom Burden Among Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Recipients...

Immediate side effects after chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy are well documented and include cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and immune effector-cell-associated neurotoxicity (ICANS). However, long-term patient-reported outcomes are understudied. Using a social determinants of health (SDoH) framework, we described the long-term health-related quality of life (HRQoL), cognitive function, and symptom burden of patients in sustained remission after CAR T-cell therapy and examined the relationship between acute CRS and ICANS and long-term cognitive function and symptom burden.

This cross-sectional study included adults in remission after CAR T-cell therapy for multiple myeloma or B-cell lymphoma who were within 1-5 years post-treatment. We used bivariate analyses to measure associations between clinical and SDoH variables and long-term outcomes and linear regression to examine the relationship between ICANS and CRS toxicity and longer-term outcomes.

Participants (n = 58) were a median of 67 years of age (22-88), 72% had lymphoma, 28% had multiple myeloma, and they were a median of 2 years (1-4.7) post-CAR T-cell infusion. Most of the participants reported good HRQoL. Over one third of participants reported mild-to-moderate impairment in physical function, social roles and activities, or pain domains. Higher income and employment were significantly associated with better physical HRQoL (P < .05). Participants reported low symptom burden, with fatigue most commonly reported. Neither CRS nor ICANS toxicity predicted long-term cognitive function or symptom burden.

Patients in long-term remission after CAR T-cell therapy have good HRQoL and cognitive function with minimal symptom burden. Importantly, there was no relationship between CRS and ICANS and long-term symptom burden or cognitive function. Results support the long-term clinical benefit of CAR T-cell therapy.