Background: Several studies have been published on the effect of body weight at diagnosis on the outcome of children with
leukemia, but the results are not the same. The aim of this investigation was to study the survival of children with ALL admitted to
a tertiary center in a developing country. Methods and Materials: This retrospective cohort study was performed on with standard
risk B-precursor ALL in Ali-Asghar Children's Hospital. Patients in the high-risk group, patients with Down syndrome, and
patients who had undergone significant changes during the treatment protocol were also excluded from the study. After
completing the questionnaire, BMI at the time of diagnosis was calculated and patients were divided into four groups:
underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese. Finally, the results were analyzed using SPSS software, descriptive data was
analyzed by descriptive analysis methods and survival rate was analyzed by Kaplan-Meyer method with considering 95%
confidence interval. Results: 112 patients aged 1 to 10 years (m/f ≈ 1.2/1) were enrolled to the study. 5-year overall survival of all
patients and event-free survival of all patients were obtained from analysis 96.40± 2.1% and 86.80± 3.6%, respectively. Also from the
analysis, the overall 5-year survival of all patients based on the status of the body mass index was obtained for underweight 100%,
normal weight 95.70±3%, obese and over-weight 92.3±7.4%. Finally, no significant relationship was observed between overall
survival and BMI. Furthermore, 5-year event-free survival analysis of patients based on BMI status in underweight 86.10±6.6%,
normal weight 86.10±5%, obese and over-weight 92.9±6.9% was achieved. Lastly, there was no statistically significant relationship
between event-free survival and BMI. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study and their comparison from other studies in this
field, it is concluded that overall survival in obese and overweight children is lower than normal weight and underweight children.
These different results from some other studies suggest the need for more accurate prospective studies with larger sample sizes.
Keywords: Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Survival, BMI index