THERAPY

Antineoplastic regimen effective in advanced NHL

An antineoplastic regimen comprising bendamustine, mitoxantrone, methotrexate and prednisolone appears to be effective in the treatment of patients with refractory or relapsed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), report researchers from Germany.

23 patients with NHL not responsive to therapy or who had relapsed disease were followed in this study; the majority of patients had stage III or IV disease. Patients received IV bendamustine 60 mg/m2 on days 1-3 (initially they received 50 mg/m2 on days 1-5 but this resulted in severe myelotoxicity), IV mitoxantrone 12 mg/m2 on day 1, methotrexate 30 mg/m2 on day 3 and IV prednisolone 60 mg/m2 on days 1-5. In addition, patients received granulocyte colony-stimulating factor 300 or 480~g from day 6 until the WBC was approximately 2500/~1. Therapy was repeated every 29 days, and patients received 2-6 treatment cycles.

11/23 achieve response The duration of follow-up ranged from 2-26

months. Three patients achieved a complete remission, 8 achieved a partial remission and 1 patient had stable disease. The remaining 11 patients failed to respond to therapy. The median duration of disease­free survival was 10.8 months.

The most common adverse effects were leucocytopenia and thrombocytopenia. Kahl C. Herold M, HiiHkcs H-G, Franke A. Bendamustine. mcthotrexalC, mitoxantrone, and pmlnisolone (BMMP) for the trealmCnt of relapsed or refractory high-grade non-Hodgkin' s lymphoma. Onkologic 20: 406-408,

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Inpharma-13 Dec 1887 No. 1117