More chemotherapy, more often, may be of substantial benefit to younger people suffering from diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a new study shows.
According to Yahoo! Health, researchers based at the University of Rouen in France have found that more-intensive-than-average chemotherapy, when combined with the monoclonal antibody drug rituximab, helps reduce the reappearance of lymphoma and increase survival rates among patients 60 years old or younger.
In conducting the study, published online Nov. 24 in The Lancet, researchers treated 379 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients (of ages ranging from 18 to 59), giving some of them four cycles of higher-intensity chemotherapy (doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vindesine, bleomycin, and prednisone) plus rituximab at two-week intervals while offering others eight cycles of standard chemotherapy (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) plus rituximab at three-week intervals. Researchers then conducted follow-ups several years later.
Patients who underwent higher-intensity chemotherapy, researchers found, were 44 percent less likely than those who underwent traditional chemotherapy to experience a lymphatic “event” three years after treatment. Higher-intensity chemotherapy patients also had after three years a 56 percent lower risk of death and were 52 percent less likely to see their disease progress.
