The Impact of Activated Akt Expression On Clinical Outcome in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma: A Clinicopathological Study of 99 Cases.

Akt is a serine/threonine kinase that plays a central role in cell proliferation and growth. To define clinical impact of Akt expression in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma(DLBCL), we investigated the expression of phospho-Akt(p-Akt) in DLBCL and analyzed clinical impact of p-Akt expression on patient survival.

We evaluated the p-Akt expression in 99 DLBCL patients using tissue microarray(TMA) technology.

Positive p-Akt expression was observed in 15.2% of the patients and significantly associated with elevated lactic dehydrogenase level (P = .044). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the patients with positive p-Akt expression showed substantially poorer overall survival (p-Akt+ vs p-Akt- 25.3 months [95% confidence interval(CI), 14.4–36.2 months] vs 192.6 months [95% CI, 131.3–253.9 months], P < .001) and progression-free survival (p-Akt+ vs p-Akt- 13.6 months[95% CI, 14.4–36.2 months] vs 134.5 months [95% CI, 131.3–253.9 months], P < .001), respectively. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that patients with DLBCL with p-Akt positivity showed poorer overall survival with 3.2 fold (95% CI, 1.6–6.8, P = .002) risk for death compared to patients with DLBCL with p-Akt negativity.

Positive expression of p-Akt in DLBCL patients is associated with poorer overall and progression-free survival. Expression of p-Akt may act as an independent poor prognostic factor and might be a novel therapeutic target for DLBCL.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.