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Abstract
Rituximab (R) is an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody which has become an essential component for the treatment of B-cell lymphomas. When associated to chemotherapy it improves the outcome of the patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, and other lymphoproliferative diseases in comparison to chemotherapy alone. For patients with newly diagnosed follicular lymphoma achieving at least a partial response to initial immuno-chemotherapy, maintenance R was associated with an improvement in progression-free survival and a meta-analysis of randomized maintenance trials suggests an overall survival advantage. The role of maintenance R in other indolent diseases is less well-defined. In this article, we summarize the data available for this strategy in less frequent subtypes of indolent B-cell lymphomas.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr Davide Rossi for critical reading of the CLL/SLL section.
Potential conflict of interest
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2016.1248963.