Early Relapse After Transplant Signifies Worse Overall Survival in MCL

Peter Riedell, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the effect of time to relapse in patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) after frontline high-dose rituximab (Rituxan)-based therapy and autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (AHCT).

The Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research database allowed Riedell and his fellow investigators to look at unique data points. Their analysis showed the impact of relapse on overall survival (OS) at 6-month intervals. Riedell says what was interesting to him and his colleagues was that the multivariate analysis showed that the impact on OS varied with time and was the greatest at the early time points after patients with MCL received AHCT. The investigators observed that those who relapsed by the 6-month, 12-month, or 18-month landmark time points after AHCT had the worst outcomes overall.

Patients with MCL who were considered older, 60 years old and above, had worse OS at the various landmark time points. This was consistent with other previously published data, according to Riedell. The median age in the analysis was 60 years (range, 29-78).