Rituxan maintenance for mantle cell lymphoma – pro
A recent guideline says this about maintenance rituximab for low grade lymphoma: “For previously treated patients with follicular or other indolent B-cell-histology lymphoma (such as mantle cell lymphoma, marginal zone lymphoma, and lymphoplasmacytoid lymphoma), excluding small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL):
For mantle cell lymphoma, NCCN does not recommend maintenance. A recent retrospective review has not been adopted by NCCN. Maintenance therapy improved PFS of patients with MCL, but no survival benefit could be shown. The pooled analysis is based mainly on the results of rituximab maintenance as data of the effect of bortezomib maintenance is scarce. The absence of significant increase of infection rate as opposed to maintenance rituximab in follicular lymphoma might be attributed to the small sample size. Based on these results patients treated for both first line and relapsed/refractory MCL should receive rituximab maintenance after achieving response to induction.
NCCN, MANT-4 2017
Liat Vidal, Anat Gafter-Gvili, Martin H. Dreyling, Michael Unterhalt, Pia Raanani, Michele Ghielmini and Ronit Gurion, Maintenance Therapy for Patients with Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL) – a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). Blood 2016 128:1802;