Researchers of a study do not recommend maintenance therapy in patients with newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The study appeared in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Hematology.
Previous clinical trials have examined the role of role of maintenance therapy in untreated DLBCL patients; however, the effect of such therapy remains unclear.
In this study, the investigators performed a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis (NMA) to compare and assess the effectiveness of different maintenance regimens in patients with newly diagnosed DLBCL. They combed PubMed, Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials for relevant papers from inception to March 18, 2021.
Overall, the researchers evaluated eight trials and seven treatments comprised of 3,525 patients.
According to the results, an overall survival (OS) analysis suggested that none of the maintenance therapies demonstrated any benefit compared with non-maintenance therapy. The maintenance therapy that did demonstrate the highest OS was lenalidomide, with a surface under the cumulative ranking of 69.3%.
“Based on the OS results observed in this NMA, we do not recommend maintenance therapy in patients with newly diagnosed DLBLC after first-line therapy,” the researchers concluded.
Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34104373/
Keywords: chemotherapy, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, maintenance therapy, meta-analysis, targeted therapy
