Fig. 4

High proportion of anergic B cells in the BM is associated with significantly shorter overall survival. a. Proportions of anergic B cells in the BM (N = 47) of DLBCL patients at diagnosis were quantified using multicolor flow cytometry to look at its impact on overall survival. For this, the BM data was divided into anergic B cell “high” and “low” groups using a median split approach where proportions > 13.9% was “high” and ≤ 13.9% was “low”. b. BM involvement (yes/no) in the same cohort of patients was also determined to look at how it compares with overall survival. Above analysis was repeated on DLBCL not otherwise specified (N = 40) after excluding primary central nervous system DLBCL (N = 2) and transformed disease (N = 5) for c. “high” and “low” anergic B cell BM marrow proportions and d. BM involvement (yes/no). BM involvement was determined and recorded previously as detection of cells having an abnormal kappa: lambda light chain ratio with normal expression defined as 3:2 on flow cytometry. Overall survival was measured as the number of months from the date of diagnosis to the date of death or date of last follow-up (censored). For this Kaplan Meier analysis, p < .05 was taken to be significant