Malignancies are the major cause of death in patients with adult onset common variable immunodeficiency

In the paper by Resnick et al, the authors clearly defined lymphoma, lung impairment, hepatitis, and gastrointestinal disease as the main causes of mortality in 411 subjects with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) followed over 4 decades in New York. The diagnosis of CVID was made by standard criteria. All data have been collected during the patient's monthly visits at the time of Ig replacement that, in Italy, occurs only during hospital settings. For mortality analysis, the time since diagnosis was determined starting from the age of CVID diagnosis. Probabilities of survival after diagnosis of CVID were estimated from Kaplan-Meier analysis. The median age at diagnosis was 40 years for females and 36 years for males.