Genetic polymorphisms of STAT3 correlated with prognosis in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients treated with rituximab

Abstract

Background: Rituximab in the combination of CHOP chemotherapy has been widely used as the standard treatment for several kinds of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL). Inactivation of phosphorylation of STAT3 plays an essential role in rituximab-induced anti-proliferative activity in B-cell lymphoma. However, the relationship between STAT3 genetic polymorphisms and clinical response to standard frontline treatment with rituximab has not been well illustrated yet.Methods: In this study we analyzed the STAT3 polymorphisms and prognosis of 166 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients who were treated with rituximab from 2007 to 2010. Determination of the STAT3 polymorphisms of rs2293152 from genomic DNA was achieved by Sanger chain termination sequencing.Results: We did not observe obvious correlation between patients' disease features and STAT3 polymorphisms, but patients with homozygous genotypes at rs2293162 showed a trend of higher CR rate than those with the heterozygous genotype, especially in non-GCB subgroup (p = 0.011). Furthermore, homozygous genotypes GG and CC also showed advantages of long-term survival compared with heterozygous genotype patients (p = 0.022).Conclusions: These results suggest that STAT3 polymorphisms could be a suitable biomarker related to clinical outcome of DLBCL patients treated with rituximab. © 2014 Hu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.