Important note: Information in this article was accurate in December 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, December 17, 2001
Michael Greer, Senior Medical Writer
NewsRx -- Researchers in Italy have found a chemotherapy regimen that may provide effective treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma in AIDS patients.
"Intensive chemotherapy (CHT) in AIDS-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (AIDS-NHL patients) is a vexing problem," according to Dr. Roberta Gastaldi and colleagues at University La Sapienza in Rome.
Gastaldi and coauthors say that a regimen based on high-doses of idarubicin produced positive results in their preliminary study.
The researchers evaluated the safety and efficacy of this drug regimen in 14 treatment-naive patients with diffuse large cell AIDS-NHL. Treatment consisted of high-dose (20-25 mg/m2) idarubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and dexamethasone with filgrastim and infection prophylaxis, they said.
Thirteen of the 14 patients achieved complete response, study data showed, which lasted for a median of 33 months. Ten patients were still alive after five years, six of whom remained in remission. Opportunistic infections were infrequent in patients with relatively high CD4 cell counts but developed in four of the five patients with less than 100 CD4 cells/µL, Gastaldi and coworkers noted.
Multiple courses of this regimen led to a significant reduction in CD4 cell counts and a significant increase in viral load (High dose idarubicin-based regimen for diffuse large cell AIDS-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients: A pilot study, Haematologica 2001 Oct;86(10):1051-1059.
"The proposed chemotherapeutic regimen for AIDS-related non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is feasible in an outpatient setting in selected patients with relatively well-preserved immune function," Gastaldi and coauthors concluded.
The corresponding author for this report is Roberta Gastaldi, MD, Dept. of Cellular Biotechnology and Hematology, University La Sapienza of Rome, via Benevento, 6 00161 Rome, Italy. E-mail: gastaldi@bce.med.uniroma1.it.
Key points reported in this study include
This article was prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports.
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