Titer up.

This analysis of outcomes across 2354 patients receiving definitive radiation for non-metastatic nasopharyngeal cancer evaluated if EBV status adds prognostic status to TNM staging. Just over half (57%) had detectable pretreatment EBV-DNA. Interestingly, TNM was prognostic for survival among those EBV+ patients but wasn’t for the remaining EBV- patients. Say what? Then what good is it? To remedy this, they used recursive partitioning analyses to reimagine staging with the resulting groups: stage I was any T1-3N0 or EBV- T1-3N1, stage III was EBV+ T4 and/or N3, and stage II was anything in between. Indeed, survival distinctions were better delineated among these staging groups than traditional TNM staging—figure 2 says it all. | Li, JAMA Netw Open 2021