Increase of CD3+CD7- T cells in bone marrow predicts invasion in patients with T-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Ziyang Huang; Binbin Chen; Yixin Ling; Yangya Pan; Songfu Jiang; Shenghui Zhang; Kang Yu; Yixiang Han

doi:10.21037/tcr-21-2666

Increase of CD3⁺CD7^- T cells in bone marrow predicts invasion in patients with T-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Transl Cancer Res. 2022 Jun;11(6):1463-1471. doi: 10.21037/tcr-21-2666.

Authors

Ziyang Huang^#¹, Binbin Chen^#¹, Yixin Ling^{1

2}, Yangya Pan^{1

2}, Songfu Jiang¹, Shenghui Zhang^{1

3}, Kang Yu¹, Yixiang Han⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Hematology, Wenzhou Key Laboratory of Hematology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
² Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
³ Laboratory Animal Center, the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
⁴ Central Laboratory, the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: The T-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (T-NHL) patients with bone marrow (BM) invasion have a poor prognosis. Although BM biopsy is still a confirmed diagnosis method, the low sensitivity restricts its use to detect the minimal BM invasion. It is of great clinical significance to establish a rapid and highly sensitive method to evaluate BM invasion.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 85 patients with new diagnosed T-NHL patients enrolled in our institute. The bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMNCs) cells were isolated, stained with different combinations of antibody and subjected to flow cytometry analysis.

Results: We found that CD3⁺CD7^- T cells increased significantly in the BM in T-NHL patients with BM invasion. The patients were divided into the low and high groups according to the cutoff value of 1.035% obtained by analyzing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the percentage of CD3⁺CD7^- T cells of nucleated cells at diagnosis. The ratio of invasion in high group was markedly higher than that in low group. Furthermore, CD3⁺CD7^- T cells presented significantly higher level of programmed cell death-1 (PD-1), lymphocyte-activation-gene-3 (LAG3) and CD4/CD8 ratio.

Conclusions: Our study revealed the percentage of CD3⁺CD7^- T cells of nucleated cells in BM was a potential diagnostic predictor of BM invasion with T-NHL.

Keywords: CD3+CD7− T cells; T-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (T-NHL); prognostic predictor.