Publication Date:
2010-11-19
Description:
Abstract 3032 The treatment of Waldenström's Macroglobulinemia (WM) has changed over the last decades, mainly since the introduction of nucleoside analogues and of rituximab in the management of this disease. Furthermore, novel agents such as bortezomib have been recently introduced. Several analyses in multiple myeloma indicated that the outcome of these patients has significantly improved over the last decade as a result of the introduction of novel agents. However, such data are not available for patients with WM. Thus, we performed an analysis in order to investigate whether the outcome of patients with WM has improved over the last years, compared to that of patients who started treatment before new drugs, such as rituximab became widely available, especially as part of the frontline treatment. We analyzed the database of the Greek Myeloma Study Group which includes 345 patients, who started treatment after January 1985: 130 patients initiated treatment before 1/1/2000 (Group A) and 215 patients started treatment after 1/1/2000 (Group B). More patients were males in both groups (54% in group A vs. 63% in group B, p=0.084), but patients in group B were older (median age 70 years vs. 65 years in group A, p=0.001). Patients in both groups started treatment mainly due to anemia (40% and 43% in groups A and B, respectively). Similar percentages of patients in groups A and B had hemoglobin ≤11.5 g/dl (74% vs. 77%, p=0.57), platelets ≤100,000/ml (12% vs. 14%, p=0.643), albumin ≤3.5 g/dl (44% vs. 50%, p=0.306) and elevated LDH (≥250 IU/L) (21% vs. 17%, p=0.422). The median serum M-peak levels were also similar (3.95 g/dl vs. 3.75 g/dl, p=0.485) while 5% and 7% of patients in groups A and B had a serum M-peak 〉7 g/dl (p=0.491). However, more patients in group B had serum beta2-microglobulin above 3 mg/dl (62% vs. 42%, p=0.004). Thus, according to the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) for WM, 30%, 48%, and 22% had low, intermediate and high risk disease in group A and 15%, 42% and 43% in group B, respectively (p
Print ISSN:
0006-4971
Electronic ISSN:
1528-0020
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine