The addition of rituximab to front-line therapy with CHOP (R-CHOP) results in a higher response rate and longer time to treatment failure in patients with lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma: results of a randomized trial of the German Low-Grade Lymphoma Study Group (GLSG)

Lymphoplasmacytic lymphoma (LPL) is an indolent lymphoma with moderate sensitivity to conventional chemotherapy. This study investigated whether the addition of rituximab to standard chemotherapy improves treatment outcome in LPL and the subgroup of LPL patients fulfilling the criteria of Waldenstroem's macroglobulinemia (WM). A total of 69 patients with previously untreated LPL were enrolled into the trial; 64 patients were evaluable for treatment outcome. In all, 48 of the 64 LPL patients fulfilled the criteria of WM. Patients were randomly assigned to R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone, n=34) or CHOP (n=30). R-CHOP resulted in significantly highe…