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Free keywords:
Adult
Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols/*therapeutic use
Biomarkers/blood
Chemokine CCL17/*blood
Cohort Studies
Female
Germany
Hodgkin Disease/*blood/diagnosis/*drug therapy
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Multivariate Analysis
Neoplasm Staging
Prognosis
Remission Induction
Retrospective Studies
Risk Factors
Young Adult
Abstract:
Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) has become one of the best curable cancers. However, better biomarkers are needed for outcome prediction that would allow protecting patients from over- or under-dosing of treatment. Thymus and activation-regulated chemokine/CCL17 (TARC) is highly and specifically elevated in this disease and has been proposed as possible biomarker in HL patients. In this study, we show that pretreatment TARC levels were associated with established clinical risk factors and predictive for response to treatment in a large cohort of HL patients treated in clinical trials by the German Hodgkin Study Group. Moreover, TARC levels also significantly contributed to a novel multivariate model predicting treatment response. These data clearly suggest an important role for this chemokine as biomarker in HL.