Does patient sex play a role in treatment-free remission in chronic myeloid leukemia?

Excerpt

Yamaguchi et al. reported treatment-free remission (TFR) after discontinuation of front-line dasatinib in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) [1]. The TFR appeared to be lower than that in recent tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) discontinuation studies, especially in studies similar to that of first-line DADI (TFR 55.8% at 1 year) and DASFREE (TFR 54% at 1 year in front-line dasatinib patients) trials [2, 3]. Although male sex was reportedly a favorable prognostic factor for TFR in the STIM trial, patient sex did not affect TFR in the majority of TKI discontinuation trials. The clinical impact of sex differences, especially those derived from sex-specific immune responses to CML, have not been fully elucidated in patients with CML. Male and female patients were approximately equally enrolled in the first-line DADI and DASFREE trials, whereas female patients that discontinued TKIs were predominantly enrolled in the D‑NewS Study. Whether patient sex differences were involved in the decrease in TFR remains unknown. …