Is there a role for a maintenance rituximab in indolent lymphoproliferative diseases other than follicular lymphoma?

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.

Keywords:

• Maintenance
• rituximab
• lymphoma
• indolent

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.