Abstract
BACKGROUND
Many patients with recurrent, intermediate or highโgrade nonโHodgkin lymphoma (NHL) may not respond to or are not candidates for aggressive salvage chemotherapy. Effective, less toxic regimens are needed. Although highโdose taxanes have not been reported to be very effective for the treatment of lymphoma, different delivery rates may allow for different mechanisms of action to be manifest and result in a different toxicity profile and response rate. The current study tested this hypothesis by using lowโdose, weekly paclitaxel in patients with recurrent or refractory NHL.
METHODS
Adults age > 18 years with refractory or recurrent, aggressive NHL who were not considered curable with standard highโdose therapy received paclitaxel at a dose of 80 mg/m^2^ weekly for 5 weeks for 2 cycles.
RESULTS
Thirtyโfour patients with refractory NHL and 4 patients with recurrent disease were treated. Approximately 45% of the patients had achieved a prior disease remission. The median number of prior regimens received was 3, 74% of the patients had an International Prognostic Index of โฅ 3 at the time of study entry, and 29% had failed highโdose therapy with autologous hematopoietic support. Only one patient encountered severe toxicity (sepsis). Myelosuppression was reported to occur in approximately 20% of patients. A total of 10 patients (26%) achieved a complete disease response and 4 patients (11%) achieved a partial response.
CONCLUSIONS
In the current study, lowโdose, weekly paclitaxel therapy was found to provide a well tolerated and less toxic approach to the treatment of refractory NHL, with encouraging responses noted in heavily pretreated patients. However, evaluation in patients with an earlier stage of disease is warranted. Cancer 2004. ยฉ 2004 American Cancer Society.