INTRODUCTION
Lymphoblastic lymphoma (LLy) accounts for 15% to 20% of all pediatric
non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) based on statistics from North America and
Western Europe1. The prevalence of LLy in other
regions of the world is less well defined and there may be important
epidemiological and biological variations across different
continents2. Even though its epidemiology and outcome
is well-characterized in the northern hemisphere2,
there is scant information from low and middle-income countries, and no
large cohorts of pediatric patients with LLy from Latin America have
been previously reported.
Since 2017, the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine at St. Jude
Children’s Research Hospital (St. Jude) actively promotes the St. Jude
Global Alliance to centers across Latin America that provide care to
children with cancer in the region. This collaboration provides among
others, the opportunity to conduct descriptive clinical studies to
analyze the cancer characteristics and outcome of Latin American
patients in a large transnational population.
The primary objective of the present study is to describe the outcome of
children and adolescents treated for LLy at institutions in Latin
America participating in the St. Jude Global Alliance. Secondary
objectives include describing the clinical characteristics at
presentation and assessment of the treatment strategies.