The Impact Of Rituxan For The Treatment Of Follicular Lymphoma

The Impact Of Rituxan For The Treatment Of Follicular Lymphoma.
New inspect provides more testify that treating certain lymphoma patients with an valuable drug over the long term helps them go longer without symptoms. But the drug, called rituximab (Rituxan), does not seem to significantly widen life span, raising questions about whether it's worth taking. People with lymphoma who are looking at maintenance treatment "really need a discussion with their oncologist," said Dr Steven T Rosen, number one of the Robert H Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University in Chicago get the facts. The cramming involved people with follicular lymphoma, one of the milder forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a length of time that refers to cancers of the immune system.

Though it can be fatal, most commonalty live for at least 10 years after diagnosis. There has been debate over whether people with the disease should consider Rituxan as maintenance therapy after their initial chemotherapy. In the study, which was funded in part by F Hoffmann-La Roche, a pharmaceutical troop that sells Rituxan, roughly half of the 1019 participants took Rituxan, and the others did not neosizexlusa.shop. All in days of old had taken the drug right after receiving chemotherapy.

In the next three years, the swotting found, people taking the drug took longer, on average, to come out symptoms. Three-quarters of them made it to the three-year mark without progression of their illness, compared with about 58 percent of those who didn't lay the drug. But the death rate over three years remained about the same, according to the report, published online Dec 21 2010 in The Lancet.

The soporific "should now be considered as first-line curing for these patients," wrote Dr Gilles Salles of Hospices Civils de Lyon & Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, and his probe colleagues. But Rosen said there's still a detach over use of the drug as maintenance therapy. "Physicians are falling into two groups. One says, 'There was no survival advantage, I'd just stand by until you have sequence and then retreat you.

That's not unreasonable'". Another group "would say that there's potentially better standing of life during the period without disease. But the psychological benefits from not having any evidence of infirmity are hard to measure".

In a comment accompanying the report in The Lancet, Dr Jonathan Friedberg, of the hematology and oncology partition at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, wrote that "an scrutiny of cost-effectiveness would be very helpful. In an era of increased health-care costs, what benefit is necessary to acquit the cost of this maintenance strategy, which at my institution would cost Medicare more than $60000 per patient?" Friedberg asked.

He also described as too soon the researchers' statement that maintenance therapy with the drug should be prescribed for all males and females with follicular lymphoma who are initially treated with rituximab plus chemotherapy erectile. "However, maintenance is an option," Friedberg said, adding that "the investigators are to be congratulated for this notable contribution and are strongly encouraged to endure follow-up of these patients to answer the questions that remain".