Lymphoma
A recent review in the March 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine used data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program to show that survival rates for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) have increased in recent years.
Although this is a very general statement concerning this very diverse disease; it is good news.
The results showed that between 1990 and 2004, 5-year relative survival for NHL patients has increased from 50.4% to 66.8% and 10-year relative survival has increased from 39.4% to 56.3%.
This study hits close to home as we have a family member battling it now and we continue to follow any and all new treatment strategies.
The problem with this general statement is that there are multiple subcategories of NHL and some respond extremely well whereas the poorer categories really have not changed much in overall prognosis.
The improvements seen are probably related to 2 key factors. The first is the use of the drug rituximab (Rituxan/MabThera, Roche) that is a type of antibody therapy. The second factor probably contributing to the improved outlook is the decrease in recent years in the number of cases of NHL related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which is directly related to the improved treatment of HIV related illnesses.
Overall, this is good news, but there is still a lot of room to improve outcomes further!
Although this is a very general statement concerning this very diverse disease; it is good news.
The results showed that between 1990 and 2004, 5-year relative survival for NHL patients has increased from 50.4% to 66.8% and 10-year relative survival has increased from 39.4% to 56.3%.
This study hits close to home as we have a family member battling it now and we continue to follow any and all new treatment strategies.
The problem with this general statement is that there are multiple subcategories of NHL and some respond extremely well whereas the poorer categories really have not changed much in overall prognosis.
The improvements seen are probably related to 2 key factors. The first is the use of the drug rituximab (Rituxan/MabThera, Roche) that is a type of antibody therapy. The second factor probably contributing to the improved outlook is the decrease in recent years in the number of cases of NHL related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which is directly related to the improved treatment of HIV related illnesses.
Overall, this is good news, but there is still a lot of room to improve outcomes further!
posted by Anonymous at 5:50 AM
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