Genetic Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease in Adult Lymphoma Patients

Purpose

The development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a relatively rare but a clinically important adverse event in the treatment of lymphoma, particularly in individuals receiving anthracyclines. There are few studies assessing the role of germline genetic susceptibility as a predictor of CVD in this setting. We evaluated the association of 24 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from candidate genes involved in anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity, CVD, and venous thromboembolism with new-onset CVD in a prospective cohort of lymphoma patients treated in the modern era.

Methods

All patients were from the Mayo component of the Molecular Epidemiology Resource (MER) of the University of Iowa/Mayo Clinic Lymphoma SPORE. Enrollment from 2002-2015 was offered to patients with newly diagnosed lymphoma who were age ≥18 years. Clinical, pathology and treatment data were abstracted using a standard protocol, and participants provided a peripheral blood sample, from which DNA was extracted. All patients were prospectively contacted every 6 months for the first 3 years from diagnosis and then annually thereafter to assess disease status, re-treatment and development of new morbidities, including CVD. Reported CVD events included congestive heart failure (CHF), coronary heart disease (CHD), arrhythmia, valvular heart disease (VHD), and other CVD. These events were identified during follow-up and validated against medical records. Genotyping was conducted using a custom Illumina iSelect platform with rigorous quality controls. For each SNP, Cox regression was used to estimate Hazard Ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) with time to first CVD, using death without CVD as a competing risk. HRs were also obtained for time to CHF, using death without CVD as a competing risk. We also modeled these events for all patients and for patients receiving frontline anthracyclines. Each SNP was modeled as having a log-additive (per minor allele) effect in the regression model. An ordinal test was used to assess the trend, with a nominal P<0.05 considered statistically significant.

Results

There were a total of 3,063 newly diagnosed lymphoma patients (excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia) with no history of CVD at time of lymphoma diagnosis, of which 1280 had genotype data available for analysis. The median age at diagnosis was 59 years (range, 18-95) and 56% were male. The most common subtypes were follicular (26.3%), diffuse large B-cell (23.2%), Hodgkin (11.3%), marginal zone (11.2%), mantle cell (6.3%) and T-cell (5.4%) lymphoma. Anthracycline-based chemotherapy as initial therapy was used in 52% of individuals. At a median follow-up of 6.9 years (range, 0.1-17.1), 363 (30.7%) patients died, and 173 (13.5%) had new-onset CVD after lymphoma diagnosis. There were 234 incident CVD events in the 173 patients: 49 CHD, 50 CHF, 27 VHD, 103 arrhythmias, and 5 other CVD. Results are shown in the Table. When assessing all CVD, F5 (rs4524) (HR=1.28, 95% CI=1.03-1.58) and F11 (rs4253399) (HR=1.30, 95% CI=1.06-1.61) were associated with CVD at P<0.05; both associations attenuated slightly when restricted to anthracycline-treated patients (F5 HR=1.18, 95% CI=0.89-1.57; F11 HR=1.23, 95% CI=0.92-1.65). F11 was more strongly associated with CHF (HR=1.55, 95% CI=1.03-2.34) and CHF in anthracycline-treated patients (HR=1.64, 95% CI=0.98-2.76). NCF4 (rs1883112) was marginally associated with lower risk of CVD overall (HR=0.81, 95% CI=0.66-1.00), and this association strengthened when restricted to anthracycline-treated patients (HR=0.67, 95% CI=0.49-0.91) and showed similar trends in HRs for CHF (HR=0.77, 95% CI=0.51-1.16) and CHF in anthracycline-treated patients (HR=0.72, 95% CI=0.41-1.28), although neither estimate was statistically significant at P<0.05. Finally, while XDH (rs2236168) was not associated with all CVD (HR=1.00, 95% CI=0.81-1.23), it was associated with CHF (HR=0.66, 95% CI=0.47-0.93) overall, but attenuated in anthracycline-treated patients (HR=0.81, 95% CI=0.55-1.18).

Conclusions

In this exploratory study of candidate SNPs from the literature, we found limited evidence for a role of germline genetic variability in predicting risk of CVD or CHF in a cohort of lymphoma patients, especially after accounting for multiple testing. To fully address this hypothesis, future studies will need larger sample sizes and more comprehensive genetic assessment.

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