[Clinical significance of survivin expression in peripheral T-cell lymphoma].

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) accounts for about 10%-15% of non-hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL), usually associated with short clinical course and poor prognosis. The over expression of survivin, a member of inhibitor of apoptotic protein (IAP), is regarded as a poor prognostic index in many malignant tumors. This study was to detect the expression of survivin in PTCL, and analyze its correlation to clinical features and prognosis of PTCL.

METHODS: The expression of survivin in 51 specimens of naive PTCL was detected by immunohistochemistry. The correlations of survivin expression to clinical features and prognosis were analyzed by SPSS10.0 software.

RESULTS: The positive rate of survivin was 82.3%. Its expression had no significant correlations to sex, age, clinical stage, the number of extranodal lesions, performance status, serum level of lactate dehydrogenase, B symptoms, and international prognostic index (P>0.05). The 5-year overall survival rate of the 51 patients was 32.67%. The patients with positive survivin expression had poorer 5-year overall survival than negative patients (25.0% vs. 75.0%, P=0.03). Cox regression model showed that survivin was an independent poor prognostic index of PTCL.

CONCLUSIONS: Survivin is a useful prognostic index of PTCL. We can screen out the cases which may have poor prognosis early by combining survivin expression with IPI, and improve the treatment outcome of PTCL.