Severe malnutrition evaluated by patient-generated subjective global assessment results in poor outcome among adult patients with acute leukemia: A retrospective cohort study

To evaluate nutritional status in adult patients with acute leukemia (AL) using patient-generated subjective global assessment (PG-SGA) and to investigate the influence of nutritional status on prognosis. We observationally investigated 68 adult patients with newly diagnosed AL who received PG-SGA at the First Hospital of Jilin University between May 2013 and July 2015. Clinical features, chemotherapy regimens, biochemical indexes, body composition, complete remission (CR) rate, minimal residual disease (MRD), survival time, and side-effects of chemotherapy were compared between patients with and without severe malnutrition. Mean PG-SGA scores of the total patients were 6.1 +/- 4.0, and 19 of 68 (27.9%) patients had severe malnutrition (PG-SGA score >= 9). Patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) had higher scores than those with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL; P=.011) and high-risk patients had higher scores regardless of whether they had AML or ALL (AML, P=.012; ALL, P=.043). Univariate analysis showed that severe malnutrition was correlated with age (P=.041), transferrin (P=.042), Karnofsky Performance Status score (P=.006), and C-reactive protein (CRP) (P=.018). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that severe malnutrition was associated with CRP (hazard ratio [HR]=1.020, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.002-1.039, P=.026). No difference was found in CR rate (P=.831) between patients with and without malnutrition, but those who were severely malnourished had higher MRD (P=.048 in AML patients, P=.036 in ALL patients) and more gastrointestinal side-effects (P=.014). Severe malnutrition was also associated with inferior overall survival (HR=0.243, 95% CI: 0.063-0.945, P=.041) but not with event-free survival (HR=0.808, 95% CI: 0.338-1.934, P=.663). Severe malnutrition defined by PG-SGA in adult patients with de novo AL may result in poor outcome.