Malignancies are the major cause of death in patients with adult onset common variable immunodeficiency

摘要

In the paper by Resnick et al, the authors clearly defined lym-phoma, lung impairment, hepatitis, and gastrointestinal disease as the main causes of mortality in 411 subjects with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) followed over 4 decades in New York.1 This careful analysis prompted us to assess the complications associated with poor survival over the same period of 4 decades in our cohort of 353 adult Italian CVID subjects (174 males, 179 females). The diagnosis of CVID was made by standard criteria.2 All data have been collected during the patient's monthly visits at the time of Ig replacement that, in Italy, occurs only during hospital settings. For mortality analysis, the time since diagnosis was determined starting from the age of CVID diagnosis. Probabilities of survival after diagnosis of CVID were estimated from Kaplan-Meier analysis. The median age at diagnosis was 40 years for females and 36 years for males.