• Hirokazu Nagai, Takahiro Yano, Tomoyuki Watanabe, Naokuni Uike, Seiichi Okamura, Shuichi Hanada, Fumio Kawano, Kazutaka Sunami, Nobumasa Inoue, Morio Sawamura, Tetsuo Nishiura, Tomomitsu Hotta, and Keizo Horibe.
• Clinical Research Centre, National Hospital Organization Nagoya Medical Centre, Nagoya, Japan. nagaih@nnh.hosp.go.jp
• Br. J. Haematol. 2008 Dec 1; 143 (5): 672-80.

AbstractMany controlled clinical trials have proven that rituximab improves the clinical outcome of patients with mature B cell lymphoma. This study was conducted to assess the contribution of rituximab in the actual clinical practice. Patients with newly diagnosed mature B cell lymphoma treated at 20 National Hospital Organization hospitals from January 2000 to December 2004 were consecutively registered. Rituximab was approved in September 2002 for indolent B cell lymphoma and in September 2003 for aggressive B cell lymphoma in Japan. The patients were divided into two groups depending on whether they received induction therapy containing rituximab. The endpoint was to evaluate the rituximab benefit based on 2-year progression-free survival (PFS) and 2-year overall survival (OS). A total 1126 patients received chemotherapies. Of these, 762 were diagnosed as diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and 215 as follicular lymphoma (FL). PFS and OS were markedly improved in the rituximab group compared with the non-rituximab group in patients with DLBCL (both P < 0.001) and in patients with FL (P < 0.001 and P = 0.003 respectively). Rituximab, when used for remission induction therapy, significantly improved the clinical outcome of the mature B cell lymphoma patient in actual clinical practice.

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