Recovery of Gonadal Hormone Level Is a Potential Marker for the Response and Prognosis in POEMS Syndrome Patients Treated with Bortezomib Based Combined Chemotherapy

Background：There is no standard treatment recommendation for POMES syndrome, a rare clonal plasm cell disease. Although autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) has been considered to have advantage in remission rate and long-term survival, but in most newly diagnosed cases, it is not applicable to conduct ASCT directly because of the severity of patients' conditions. Combined chemotherapy, applied in other plasm cell disorder, is a choice for POEMS syndrome. Both melphalan and lenalidomide have been proved to be effective in POEMS syndrome, but the long-term administration of these agents might damage hematopoietic stem cells and result in failure of stem cell mobilization. Proteasome inhibitor, bortezomib based regimen is also the first-line treatment in other plasm cell dyscrasia. In this study, we investigated and evaluated the effect and safety of the bortezomib-based combined chemotherapy in newly diagnosed POEMS syndrome patients.