Follicular lymphoma

Abstract

Follicular lymphoma is an indolent and usually incurable disease. It has been therefore traditionally approached either by watch and wait or with single-agent treatments. The purpose was to maintain a good quality of life for a prolonged time. More aggressive regimens, including polychemotherapy, high-dose chemotherapy with stem-cell rescue and the emergence of new cytotoxic drugs have significantly improved the remission duration but could never demonstrate an impact on overall survival. In the past decade, through the addition of drugs acting on the immune system such as interferon or rituximab, the survival of follicular lymphoma patients could be improved by the range of several years. As a consequence several clinicians believe that we are near to a cure for follicular lymphoma so that the first-line treatment should be more aggressive to reach this goal. Nevertheless, at present, none of the new strategies can be shown to cure. We believe that even in the presence of many possible treatment options, watch and wait remains a good option for many patients with follicular lymphoma. When treatment is needed, chemotherapy with rituximab is the standard even though none of the chemotherapy regimens can be shown to be superior. As quality of life remains an issue, the combination of rituximab and bendamustine, a drug with high efficacy and a favourable toxicity profile, is a good new option for patients. © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society for Medical Oncology. All rights reserved.