A novel scoring system to predict the incidence of invasive fungal disease in salvage chemotherapies for malignant lymphoma

The requirement of antifungal prophylaxis has not been established in the chemotherapies for malignant lymphoma. This study was conducted to explore the incidence of invasive fungal diseases (IFD) and their risk factors in patients receiving salvage therapies for malignant lymphoma. We retrospectively analyzed 177 consecutive patients who received these therapies (705 courses in total) at our institute. IFD were observed in 16 courses and the incidence was 2.3 %. A multivariate analysis showed that the factors associated with IFD were primary refractoriness (adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 4.22; 95 % confidence interval (CI), 1.38–13.0; p value = 0.012), two (aOR, 10.5, 95 % CI, 1.20–91.7; p = 0.033) or more (aOR, 26.2; 95 % CI, 3.27–210; p = 0.002) previous treatment lines, and the minimum neutrophil count during the therapies equal to or less than 500/μL (aOR, 9.69; 95 % CI, 1.25–74.9; p = 0.030). Using these factors, we created the IFD scoring model by assigning one point to each of primary refractoriness, two previous treatment lines and treatment that caused neutropenia (≤500/μL minimal neutrophil count) and two points to three or more previous treatment lines. The IFD incidence of lower risk group (IFD score <3) was 0.19 % and that of higher (IFD score ≥3) was 9.0 %. In conclusion, adequate prophylaxis for IFD might be required for patients with primary refractoriness, repeated therapies, or therapies which cause neutropenia. Furthermore, the IFD scoring model of this study underscores the need to account for disease and host factors in determining administration of adequate prophylaxis in salvage treatments for malignant lymphoma.