Hsu et al.

BMC Cancer 2012, 12:241

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Open Access

Advanced non-small cell lung cancer in patients

aged 45 years or younger: outcomes and
prognostic factors
Chia-Lin Hsu1, Kuan-Yu Chen1*, Jin-Yuan Shih1, Chao-Chi Ho1, Chih-Hsin Yang2, Chong-Jen Yu1 and
Pan-Chyr Yang1

Abstract
Background: Lung cancer in young patients (less or equal to 45 years) is uncommon and has clinical characteristics
different from that in older patients. We investigated the outcomes and prognostic factors of young patients with
advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Methods: From January 2000 to December 2009, we enrolled patients aged 45 years and diagnosed with stage
IIIB or IV NSCLC. Their clinical data, including age, gender, performance status, histologic types, disease stages,
laboratory data at diagnosis, treatment modalities, and survival were reviewed and analyzed. A Cox proportional
hazard model was used to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI).
Results: A total of 144 patients with advanced NSCLC were included. Female patients were more prevalent (n = 74,
51.4%). Adenocarcinoma was the most common histologic type (n = 119, 82.6%) in both genders (male, n = 54,
77.1%; female, n = 65, 87.8%). Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) sequences were determined using tumor
specimens from 58 patients, and 29 showed an EGFR mutation. No significant difference in median survival was
found between patient groups with and without the EGFR mutation (798 vs. 708 days, p = 0.65). In multivariate
analysis, male gender (HR, 1.70; 95% CI: 1.08-2.68), body mass index (BMI) less than 25 kg/m2 (HR, 2.72; 95%
CI: 1.39-5.30), stage IV disease (HR, 2.62; 95% CI: 1.50-4.57), and anemia (HR, 2.08; 95% CI: 1.15-3.77) were associated
with a short survival time.
Conclusions: Low BMI, stage IV disease, anemia at diagnosis, and male gender were the negative prognostic
factors for young patients with advanced NSCLC.
Keywords: Lung cancer, Prognosis, Young patients

Background
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality
worldwide, and has led to a number of important public
health problems[1,2]. Despite advances in treatment,
including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase
inhibitor (TKI) therapy, the 5-year survival rate is only
9% to 20% [2,3]. Lung cancer in young adults is relatively

* Correspondence: tuff.chen@msa.hinet.net
1
Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, National
Taiwan University Hospital, and College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article

rare [4-7]. The incidence of lung cancer among young

adults has been found to be around 1.2% to 6.2% (under
40 years) [5-7], 5.3% (under than 45 years) [4], and
13.4% (under 50 years) [8]. However, previous reports
have shown trends of increasing incidence rates of lung
cancer among young patients [9,10].
Lung cancer in young adults has several unique characteristics: a high percentage of patients are female,
more adenocarcinoma, more advanced stage at the time
of diagnosis, and more patients receiving aggressive
treatment [11-14]. Previous studies have shown that
young patients had a similar survival as older patients
[8,13,15]. In contrast, some studies have reported that
younger patients have better outcomes [5,16,17]. Bourke

2012 Hsu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Hsu et al. BMC Cancer 2012, 12:241

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et al. conducted a retrospective study of lung cancer

patients under 45 years in Chicago and Israel [14]. The
results showed that younger patients had shorter survival than older patients in Chicago, but longer survival
in Israel. A recent multicenter study in China showed
that middle-aged patients had longer median survival
than younger patients [4]. These inconsistent findings
could be related to different treatment modalities and
ethnicities of patients.
Little has been studied about the prognostic factors for
young patients with lung cancer. A retrospective study
analyzing young patients (n = 91) with all disease stages
from 1983 to 1993, reported that disease stages and
weight loss affected survival [13]. Because of the paucity
of data for prognosis, we conducted a retrospective
study to investigate the outcomes and prognostic factors
in young patients (45 years) with advanced non-small
cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We also reviewed available
data on EGFR mutation in the tumor tissues of young
patients and analyzed the relationship between EGFR
mutation and EGFR-TKI treatment efficacy.

Methods
Patients

Patients with a diagnosis of NSCLC between January

2000 and December 2009 were identified by using the
International Classification of Diseases, Version 9 coding
system from a computer registration database in the National Taiwan University Hospital. Those patients aged
45 years or younger and at an advanced stage of disease,
defined as stage IIIB or IV, were included. The diagnosis
was based on pathology via surgical or biopsy specimens, or cytology examination via lung, lymph node aspiration or pleural effusion. Exclusion criteria included
the clinical diagnosis of lung cancer without proven
pathology or cytology, or cases in which the lung cancer
was combined with another type of malignancy. This
study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of
the National Taiwan University Hospital.

Page 2 of 7

of less than 3.5 g/dL, and abnormal liver function, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level over 37 U/L or alanine
aminotransferase (ALT) level over 41 U/L.
Whenever available, we analyzed EGFR mutation status using a QIAmp DNA Mini kit (Qiagen, Valencia,
CA) on DNA extracted from lung cancer specimens embedded in paraffin blocks. EGFR exons 18, 19, 20, and
21 were amplified by using nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR conditions have been described previously [19].
Statistical analysis

Patients characteristics were compared using the chisquare test. Continuous variables were compared by
using an independent t-test. PFS was defined as the duration from the date of initial treatment to the date of
clinical deterioration that was described in the medical
records. OS was defined as the time from the date of
diagnosis to the date of death or last visit. The patients
were followed up until March 31, 2011 or until the date
of their death. PFS and OS were analyzed by using the
Kaplan-Meier method with log-rank test.
We conducted univariate analyses to examine the unadjusted associations between patient groups with each
independent variable. Age, gender, and factors associated
with patient survival in univariate analyses with a p value
< 0.10 were included. Proportional hazard assumption
was tested via extended Cox regression model with
time-dependent covariate and log-minus-log plot. Multicollinearity diagnostics were also performed. Multivariate analysis with Cox proportional hazard model was
applied to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and its 95%
confidence interval (CI). Data were analyzed using SPSS
software (version 18).

Results
Clinical characteristics

Between January 2000 and December 2009, 5,871

patients were diagnosed with lung cancer at the National
Taiwan University Hospital. A total of 225 patients

Data collection

The clinical data, including age, gender, initial presentation, performance status (PS), disease stages, laboratory
data at diagnosis, treatment modality and responses,
progression-free survival (PFS) for initial treatment, and
overall survival (OS) were recorded. The disease stage
was determined by surgical or clinical findings according
to the TNM classification system [18]. Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) PS was determined
according to the records for the patients activity of daily
life and the extent of dependence. Anemia was defined
as hemoglobin of less than 11 g/dL; leukocytosis, white
cell count over 10,000/L; thrombocytosis, platelet count
over 400,000/L; hypoalbuminemia, serum albumin level

Figure 1 Incidence of non-small cell lung cancer among young

patients between 2000 and 2009.

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(3.8%) were 45 years or younger. There was a trend of

increasing incidence of lung cancer among young
patients during this period (Figure 1). Among them, 64
patients had stage I to IIIA NSCLC, 5 had small cell
lung cancer, and 12 did not continue follow-up after the
initial diagnosis. In the end, 144 patients with stage IIIB
or IV NSCLC were included for analysis.
The clinical characteristics of these patients are outlined in Table 1. Their median age was 39.1 years and
51.4% were women. The most common initial clinical
presentation was cough (54.2%), followed by dyspnea
(19.4%) and chest pain/tightness (17.4%). Six patients
(4.2%) were asymptomatic, with abnormal chest image
findings during health examination. There were 62
patients (43.1%) with a history of cigarette smoking. Fifty

Table 1 The clinical characteristics of 144 young patients

with advanced non-small cell lung cancer

(34.7%) were current smokers. Most patients (n = 106,

73.6%) had a PS of 0 to 1.
Adenocarcinoma was the most common histologic
type (n = 119, 82.6%), followed by undifferentiated carcinoma (n = 16, 11.1%) and squamous cell carcinoma
(n = 9, 6.3%). There were no differences in the proportion of adenocarcinoma between genders (female vs.
male, 87.8% vs. 77.1%, p = 0.12). Compare to other age
groups (4655, 5665, 6675, and 76 years or older) on
the registry database of the National Taiwan University
Hospital, younger patients (45 years) of both genders
had the highest proportion of adenocarcinoma, and
young males had the lowest proportion of squamous cell
carcinoma (Figure 2a and 2b). Regarding disease stage,
40 patients (27.8%) had stage IIIB disease and 104
(72.2%) had stage IV disease. There were no significant
differences between male and female patients in stage
distribution.

Clinical characteristics

n(%)

Treatment modalities and response

Age, median (range)

39.1 (2245)

BMI (kg/m2)

22.1 3.3

Male gender

70 (48.6%)

Smoking (current or ex-smoker)

62 (43.1%)

For initial treatment, 85 patients (59.0%) received

chemotherapy and 41 patients (28.5%) received EGFRTKI therapy. Five patients (3.5%) who received concomitant chemotherapy and EGFR-TKI were classified as receiving other treatment. Thirteen patients (9.0%)
received supportive care. No significant differences were

Initial presentations
Pulmonary
cough

78 (54.2%)

dyspnea

28 (19.4%)

chest pain/tightness

25 (17.4%)

hemoptysis

18 (12.5%)

hoarseness

4 (2.7%)

Extrapulmonary
bone/muscle pain

15 (10.4%)

subcutaneous mass/lymphadenopathy

7 (4.9%)

fever

7 (4.9%)

focal neurological signs

6 (4.2%)

headache

5 (3.5%)

body weight loss

5 (3.5%)

others

8 (5.6%)

health exam

6 (4.2%)

Performance status (PS)

0-1

106 (73.6%)

2-4

38 (26.4%)

Disease stage
IIIB

40 (27.8%)

IV

104 (72.2%)

Histology
Adenocarcinoma

119 (82.6%)

Squamous cell carcinoma

9 (6.3%)

Undifferentiated carcinoma

16 (11.1%)

BMI: body mass index.

Figure 2 a. Proportion of adenocarcinoma in different age

groups. b. Proportion of squamous cell carcinoma in different age
groups.

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found between patient groups with PS 0 to 1 and PS 2

to 4, with regard to treatment modalities.
Among the patients who received chemotherapy, 4
patients could not be evaluated for treatment response,
including 3 patients who lost during follow-up and 1
who discontinued chemotherapy because of drug toxicity. The treatment responses of the 81 patients
included 36 with partial response (44.4%), 31 with stable
disease (38.3%), and 14 with progressive disease (17.3%).
Among the patients who received EGFR-TKI as their
initial treatment, 2 patients were lost to follow-up during
treatment. The treatment responses of the remaining 39
patients included 16 with partial response (41.0%), 15
with stable disease (38.5%), and 8 with progressive disease (20.5%).
Survival and prognostic factors

There were 125 deaths during the follow-up period. The

median survival was 14.7 months. According to the
registry database of the National Taiwan University Hospital from 2004 to 2008, the median survival of advanced
NSCLC patients in the age groups 46 to 55 (n = 362), 56
to 65 (n = 511), 66 to 75 (n = 622) and over 76 years
(n = 499) were 19.7, 15.0, 13.0, and 7.0 months, respectively. The median survival of patients 45 years old was
significantly shorter than that of patients aged 46 to
55 years (p = 0.02) and longer than that of patients
76 years old (p < 0.001). No significant difference was
found when the median survival of young patients was
compared to that of the patients aged 56 to 65 and 66 to
75 years.
To compare the effects of major treatments (chemotherapy vs. EGFR-TKI), we excluded patients who
received supportive treatment (n = 13) and concomitant
chemotherapy and EGFR-TKI (n = 5) for prognostic factor analysis. A total of 126 patients were included in
prognostic factor analysis. In univariate analysis, body
mass index (BMI) of less than 25 kg/m2, stage IV disease, poor PS, anemia, leukocytosis, thrombocytosis, and
hypoalbuminemia were related to poor outcomes
(Table 2). We examined the proportional hazard assumption and multicollinearity, and neither assumption
violation nor significant multicollinearity was noted. In
multivariate analysis, we found that male gender (HR,
1.70; 95% CI: 1.08-2.68), BMI of less than 25 kg/m2 (HR,
2.72; 95% CI: 1.39-5.30), stage IV disease (HR, 2.62; 95%
CI: 1.50-4.57), and anemia (HR, 2.08; 95% CI: 1.15-3.77)
were associated with a poor prognosis (Table 3).
EGFR mutation and prognosis

Fifty-eight patients received examination for EGFR

mutations, and 29 patients (50.0%) had EGFR mutations,
including 11 with L858R, 1 with L858R + T790M, 1 with
G719A + T790M, 1 with R776C, 1 with S768-D770 dup,

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Table 2 Univariate prognostic factor analysis of advanced

non-small cell lung cancer in young adults
Hazard Ratio
(95% confidence
interval)
Age > 40 years

1.00 (0.671.48)

p value

0.99

Male gender

1.25 (0.851.82)

0.26

BMI < 25 kg/m2

2.82 (1.525.26)

0.001

Smoking history

0.96 (0.651.41)

0.83

Medical co-morbidity

1.26 (0.552.89)

0.58

Clinical stage
IIIB

IV

2.24 (1.433.49)

<0.001

Performance status
0-1

2-4

1.59 (1.042.43)

0.03

Histology
Adenocarcinoma

Squamous cell carcinoma

1.02 (0.412.52)

0.97

Undifferentiated

1.26 (0.672.37)

0.47

Laboratory data at diagnosis

Anemia (hemoglobin < 11 g/dL)

2.44 (1.454.10)

0.001

Leukocytosis (>10,000 cells/L)

2.72 (1.754.21)

<0.001

Thrombocytosis (>400,000 cells/L)

1.70 (1.002.90)

0.05

Hypoalbuminemia (<3.5 g/dL)

3.26 (1.696.30)

<0.001

Abnormal liver function

1.12 (0.681.83)

0.65

Initial treatment modalities

Chemotherapy

EGFR-TKI therapy

1.14 (0.751.71)

0.54

BMI: body mass index; EGFR-TKI: epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine

kinase inhibitor.

and 14 with exon 19 deletions. Female patients and nonsmokers had higher rates of EGFR mutations (59.4% vs.
38.5%, p = 0.09; and 60.0% vs. 30.8%, p = 0.05, respectively), but the difference was not statistically significant.
The median survival was similar in patients with and
without EGFR mutations (798 vs. 708 days, p = 0.65).
Of the 29 patients with EGFR mutations, 15 received
EGFR-TKI as their initial treatment, 10 received chemotherapy, 3 received concomitant chemotherapy and
EGFR-TKI, and 1 received supportive care. Median PFS
was longer in patients who received EGFR-TKI as their
initial treatment than in patients who received chemotherapy as their initial treatment (180 vs. 119 days,
p = 0.03) (Figure 3a). However, there was no significant
difference in OS between the 2 groups (EGFR-TKI vs.
chemotherapy, 597 vs. 798 days, p = 0.89).
Of the 29 patients without EGFR mutations, 8 received
EGFR-TKI, 19 received chemotherapy and 2 received
only supportive care as their initial treatment. Median
PFS and OS were shorter in patients who received

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Table 3 Multivariate analysis of prognostic factors in

young advanced NSCLC

Male gender
BMI < 25 kg/m

Hazard Ratio
(95% confidence
interval)

p value

1.70 (1.082.68)

0.02

2.72 (1.395.30)

0.003

Disease stage
IIIB

IV

2.62 (1.504.57)

0.001

Performance status
0-1

2-4

1.59 (0.962.63)

0.08

Anemia (hemoglobin < 11 g/dL)

2.08 (1.153.77)

0.02

Leukocytosis (> 10,000 cells/L)

1.62 (0.942.78)

0.08

Laboratory data

BMI: body mass index.

EGFR-TKI as their initial treatment than in patients who

initially received chemotherapy (68 vs. 210 days, p = 0.01;
and 117 vs. 891 days, p = 0.04, respectively) (Figure 3b).

Discussion
Our study demonstrated the clinical presentations, and
EGFR mutation status, in young patients with advanced
NSCLC, a relative rare patient population with many differences from the older patient population. We also
found that low BMI, stage IV disease, anemia at diagnosis, and male gender were the negative prognostic factors, which seldom investigated in previous literatures.
These findings may improve comprehension of this special patient population.
Younger patients had higher rate of adenocarcinoma
(57.5-77.9%)[4-8,11]. Our study showed that adenocarcinoma was the predominant histologic type in young
patients; of both genders. The reason for the extremely
high percentage of adenocarcinoma in young patients
has been seldom studied and requires more attention.
As compared with older patients, a higher female percentage in young patients was presented in several studies (36.1-48.7%)[4,5,7]; however most studies have
shown that males were the predominant gender, except
for studies in Taiwan (51.8-52.5%) [6,11], as well as in
our study (51.4%). This might be related to the ethnicities of patients and environmental effects [20].
The outcomes of young and old patients with lung
cancer had been previously studied, but the results were
inconsistent [5,8,13-17]. Most studies compared only the
outcomes of younger and older patients, but not the outcomes of different age groups. Our study showed that
the median OS of patients aged 45 years was significantly shorter than that of patients aged between 46 and
55 years and was longer than that of patients aged

Figure 3 a. Progression-free survival after chemotherapy and

epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor
(EGFR-TKI) therapy in patients with the EGFR mutation. b.
Progression-free survival after chemotherapy and epidermal growth
factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) therapy in
patients without the EGFR mutation.

76 years. No significant difference was found when we

compared the median OS of young patients with the
patients aged between 55 to 65 and 66 to 75 years. A
similar result was obtained in a recent Chinese study.[4].
The explanation for the survival difference remains
unclear.
The influence of BMI has been studied in several types
of cancers. In gynecological malignancies, a high BMI is
associated with a higher incidence of cancer but better
disease-specific survival [21,22]. Similar results have also

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been found for gastric cancer and renal cell carcinoma

[23,24]. However, high BMI is a poor prognostic factor
in breast cancer [25-27]. Obese patients may have better
nutritional resources to withstand the stress of cancer
metastasis and cachexia [28].
Little is known about the association between prognosis and BMI in lung cancer. In epidemiology studies,
obese patients had lower lung cancer mortality; however,
the mechanism is unknown [29-31]. A recent study by
Yang et al. showed that patients who were obese at the
time of lung cancer diagnosis had a longer median survival for all cancer stages and histologic subtypes [32].
The obesity paradox is that being overweight increases
the incidence of heart failure, but in patients with
chronic heart failure, obesity is associated with better
survival. This phenomenon appears to also apply to diseases with high catabolic states, such as chronic kidney
disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lung cancer [32-34].
Hematologic abnormalities, including anemia, have
been reported as prognostic factors in many solid
tumors [35-38]. In our study, anemia was shown to be
an independent negative prognostic factor. The incidence of anemia in lung cancer patients varies from
6.5% to 34% [38,39]. Lung cancer patients presenting
with anemia have an increased 19% risk of death [40].
However, erythropoietin treatment of anemic cancer
patients has failed to demonstrate survival benefits and
may even harmful [41,42]. It should be noted that
anemia could merely reflect the disease severity, rather
than the direct cause of mortality [40,43].
The frequency of EGFR mutation in adenocarcinoma
showed wide variation among different reports (3%59.7%); this was related to ethnicity, gender, and smoking status [19,44-47]. Several studies, in which East Asia
was the focus, have shown that the EGFR mutation rate
in NSCLC was about 26% to 38.6%, and the mutation
rate increased 32% to 55% in adenocarcinoma [19,44,45].
However, there is a paucity of data regarding the EGFR
mutation status in young patients. Our study showed
that the EGFR mutation rate was 50.0% in advanced
cases of NSCLC and 51.8% in cases of adenocarcinoma.
The mutation rate was relatively high; these results
could be attributed to the high percentage of female
patients and fewer numbers of smokers among young
patients.
Of the patients with positive EGFR mutations, patients
who received EGFR-TKI had a longer PFS as compared
to patients who received chemotherapy. This result is
compatible with the Iressa Pan-Asia study and a phase 3
clinical trial conducted by the North-East Japan Study
Group [46,48]. However, the median PFS and survival
time in the EGFR-TKI group of our study were only 6.0
and 19.9 months, respectively. This was clearly shorter
than the corresponding values obtained in a phase 3 trial

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in Japan (PFS, 10.8 months; survival time, 30.5 months)

[48]. Similar results with a shorter PFS were also
observed for the chemotherapy group (this study vs.
phase 3 trial in Japan, 4.0 vs. 5.4 months) [48]. This suggests that the young patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma have a poorer treatment response compared
to the general population, especially with regard to
EGFR-TKI.
There are several limitations to this study. First, the
study was retrospective in design and included a relatively small case number. Second, because only a relatively small number of patients received EGFR mutation
analysis, the results of EGFR mutation and EGFR-TKI
treatment in the young lung cancer patients should be
interpreted carefully.

Conclusions
Male gender, low BMI, late stage disease, and anemia
were the negative prognostic factors for advanced
NSCLC in young patients. More large scale studies on
young NSCLC patients are warranted.
Abbreviations
ALT: Alanine aminotransferase; AST: Aspartate aminotransferase; BMI: Body
mass index; CI: Confidence interval; ECOG: Eastern Cooperative Oncology
Group; EGFR: Epidermal growth factor receptor; HR: Hazard ratio;
NSCLC: Non-small cell lung cancer; OS: Overall survival; PFS: Progression-free
survival; PS: Performance status; TKI: Tyrosine kinase inhibitor.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author details
1
Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, National
Taiwan University Hospital, and College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan.
2
Department of Oncology, National Taiwan University Hospital, and College
of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan.
Authors contributions
CL Hsu contributed to manuscript draft, data collection and statistical
analysis, KY Chen contributed to study design and statistical analysis, JY Shih,
CC Ho and CH Yang participated in study design and data collection, CJ Yu
and PC Yang contributed to manuscript revising. All authors read and
approved the final manuscript.
Received: 17 January 2012 Accepted: 13 June 2012
Published: 13 June 2012
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doi:10.1186/1471-2407-12-241
Cite this article as: Hsu et al.: Advanced non-small cell lung cancer in
patients aged 45 years or younger: outcomes and prognostic factors.
BMC Cancer 2012 12:241.

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