Biomed Pap Med Fac Univ Palacky Olomouc Czech Repub. 2009, 153(3):211-214 | DOI: 10.5507/bp.2009.035

RITUXIMAB DOES NOT ADVERSELY AFFECT THE STEM CELL MOBILIZATION AND ENGRAFTMENT AFTER HIGH-DOSE THERAPY AND AUTOLOGOUS TRANSPLANTATION IN PATIENTS WITH DIFFUSE LARGE B-CELL LYMPHOMA IN FIRST COMPLETE OR PARTIAL REMISSION

Tomas Papajik^a, Zuzana Pikalova^a, Ludek Raida^a, Ivana Skoumalova^a, Jana Vondrakova^a, Edgar Faber^a, Vit Prochazka^a, Zuzana Kubova^a, Ladislava Kucerova^b, Tomas Pavlik^c, Ladislav Dusek^c, Karel Indrak^a

^a Department of Hemato-oncology, Palacky University, Olomouc,

^b Department of Pathology, Palacky University, Olomouc,

^c Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Aims and Methods: The goal was to investigate the effect of prior combined rituximab (R) and intensive chemotherapy on peripheral blood stem cell mobilization and their engraftment after stem cell transplantation (ASCT) in 69 patients with poor-risk, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

Results: A statistically comparable median number of CD34+ stem cells was collected in both groups (13.80x10⁶/ kg in the non-R group and 7.81x10⁶/kg in the R group; p = 0.110). A trend toward greater number of CFU-GM was found in the non-R group (98.1x10⁴/kg) compared to the R group (76.6x10⁴/kg; p = 0.068). The non-R patients had a much higher median number of BFU-E (90.9x10⁴/kg) than the R patients (31.3x10⁴/kg; p = 0.001).

Conclusions: Hematopoietic engraftment was rapid for both groups and no different between them. The 3-year event-free survival was 90.4 % in the R group and 67.2 % in the non-R group (p = 0.04), but there was no significant difference in the 3-year overall survival (94,7 % vs 83,5 %; p = 0.179).

Keywords: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, Rituximab, Stem cell transplantation

Received: February 10, 2009; Accepted: September 3, 2009; Published: September 1, 2009  Show citation