The Impact Of Rituxan For The Treatment Of Follicular Lymphoma

The Impact Of Rituxan For The Treatment Of Follicular Lymphoma.
New scrutiny provides more attestation that treating inevitable 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 flourish life span, raising questions about whether it's good taking. People with lymphoma who are in view of maintenance treatment "really need a bull session with their oncologist," said Dr Steven T Rosen, manager of the Robert H Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University in Chicago box 4rx. The go into involved kinsmen with follicular lymphoma, one of the milder forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a duration that refers to cancers of the immune system.

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

In the next three years, the library found, people taking the narcotic took longer, on average, to develop symptoms. Three-quarters of them made it to the three-year account without progression of their illness, compared with about 58 percent of those who didn't make a note the drug. But the death amount over three years remained about the same, according to the report, published online Dec 21 2010 in The Lancet.

The dope "should now be considered as first-line remedying for these patients," wrote Dr Gilles Salles of Hospices Civils de Lyon & Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, and his investigate colleagues. But Rosen said there's still a cut up over use of the upper as stipend therapy. "Physicians are falling into two groups," he said. "One says, 'There was no survival advantage, I'd just hold on until you have broadening and then retreat you.

That's not unreasonable'". Another set "would say that there's potentially better quality of life during the space without disease," Rosen said. "But the psychological benefits from not having any smoking gun of disease are hard to measure".

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

He also described as undeveloped the researchers' expression that maintenance therapy with the drug should be prescribed for all people with follicular lymphoma who are initially treated with rituximab with an increment of chemotherapy sildenafil citrate tablet panagra. "However, prolongation is an option," Friedberg said, adding that "the investigators are to be congratulated for this mighty contribution and are strongly encouraged to last follow-up of these patients to answer the questions that remain".