Although the prognostic impact of body mass index (BMI) in patients with non-metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) had been extensively studied, its effect among metastatic NPC patients remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic effect of BMI in patients with metastatic NPC. We retrospectively studied 819 patients who were diagnosed with distant metastasis from NPC and received treatment between 1998 and 2007. The patients were divided into three subgroups according to the World Health Organization classifications for Asian populations: underweight (BMI <18.5 kg/m2), normal weight (BMI 18.5–22.9 kg/m2), and overweight/obese (BMI ≥23.0 kg/m2). The associations of BMI with overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were determined by Cox regression analysis. Of the 819 patients, 168 (20.5%) were underweight, 431 (52.6%) were normal weight, and 220 (26.9%) were overweight/obese. Multivariate analysis adjusted for covariates showed that overweight/obese patients had a longer OS than underweight patients [hazard ratio (HR), 0.64; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.49–0.84] and normal weight patients (HR, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.57–0.90); no significant difference in PFS was observed among these three groups (P = 0.407). Moreover, in stratified analysis, no statistically significant differences in the effect of overweight/obese status among different subgroups were observed. For patients with metastatic NPC, overweight/obese status was associated with longer OS but not longer PFS compared with underweight or normal weight status.

Background: Vacuum-assisted biopsy (VAB) and core needle biopsy (CNB) are both widely used methods in diagnosing breast lesions. We aimed to determine whether the Elite 10-gauge VAB achieves higher accuracy than the BARD spring-actuated 14-gauge CNB. Materials and methods: This was a phase 3, open-label, parallel, randomized controlled trial (NCT04612439). In total, 1470 patients with ultrasound (US)-visible breast lesions requiring breast biopsy were enrolled from April to July 2021 and randomized at a 1 : 1 ratio to undergo VAB or CNB. All patients underwent surgical excision after needle biopsy. The primary outcome was accuracy, defined as the proportion of patients who had a consistent qualitative diagnosis between the biopsy and surgical pathology results. The underestimation rate, false-negative rate and safety evaluations were the secondary endpoints. Results: A total of 730 and 732 patients were evaluable for endpoints in the VAB and CNB groups, respectively. The accuracy of VAB surpassed that of CNB in the whole population (94.8 vs. 91.1%, P=0.009). The overall malignant underestimation rate was significantly lower in the VAB group than in the CNB group (21.4 vs. 30.9%, P=0.035). Additionally, significantly more false-negative events were noted in the CNB group (4.9 vs. 7.8%, P=0.037). In patients who presented with accompanying calcification, the accuracy of VAB surpassed that of CNB (93.2 vs. 88.3%, P=0.022). The potential superiority of VAB was indicated in patients with heterogeneous echo on US. Conclusions: In general, the 10-G VAB procedure is a reasonable alternative to the 14-G CNB procedure with higher accuracy. We recommend the use of VAB for lesions with accompanying calcification or heterogeneous echo on US.