Post-Therapy Profile of BMI-for-Age of Indian Survivors of Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

Obesity in pediatric ALL survivors is a well recognized late effect. Hence the present study examines the body mass index (BMI)-for-age of Indian childhood ALL and NHL survivors. A retrospective study of 118 ALL/NHL survivors and 138 age sex matched controls was carried out. From the recorded heights and weights BMI was computed. The survivor data was compared with 138 controls from the data set collected by investigators previously. 82.8% of patients had BMI-for-age in 5th - 84th percentile (healthy) at time of diagnosis and at inclusion in the study. The distribution of survivors and controls according to the BMI percentiles was not significant. However, the mean BMI-for-age for younger patients (3 to 12 years) was significantly higher than mean BMI-for-age of matched controls. The preliminary study indicates late effects of therapy and points to the need of long term assessment of the survivors, even though majority of them were within the normal weight range.