RituxanRituximab was the first monoclonal antibody on the market. It goes by the brand name of Rituxan in the United States and Canada. In most of Europe it is known by the name Rituximab, and in Australia Mabthera.
Since its' debut in the USA in 1997 it has been the first new treatment to
make a dramatic improvement in response
Maintenance RituxanThere is a great deal of study being done to see if maintenance Rituxan can further extend the survival and duration of remission for indolent lymphomas. The results are very positive. The initial studies had mixed results. They showed that patients receiving maintenance Rituxan stayed in remission longer than those who did not. But they also seemed to show that waiting until you relapsed and then using Rituxan again gave you the same results. In both cases the length of time until the patient no longer responded to single agent Rituxan and required stronger chemotherapy seemed to be the same. Therefore it was unclear if there would be any survival benefit.
Here is another by another lymphoma expert Dr. Anton Hagenbeek. Maintenance or Eradication of Residual Disease in Indolent Lymphoma: Where Do We Stand
Here is another discussion about whether or not maintenance Rituxan should be used. It is from two very prominent lymphoma specialists, one who is in favour of maintenance Rituxan, and one who is not. Should maintenance Rituximab for follicular NHL be routine?
Here are a few of the abstracts about various maintenance Rituxan studies that are ongoing. The first link is a summary of all of them. The first abstract below the summary uses a schedule of one infusion every three months, though it does not say that in the title. The final two links are highly focused searches of the US National Library of Medicine, and the prestigious Blood Journal for specific maintenance Rituxan articles.
This is a good article to read if you don't want to read all the studies below, but want to know the overall results of them all.
Focused searches for articles about Maintenance Rituxan Click here for a focused search about Maintenance Rituxan from Blood
Rituxan RisksWhile Rituxan is arguably the safest treatment used for NHL it is not entirely risk free. Perhaps the best source of risk information is Rituxan's own boxed warnings.
Here are some articles about the possible risks of
Rituxan treatment. Hypogammaglobulinemia is the most frequent. This big word
just means low levels of the gamma globulin (antibodies) in the immune system.
Infectious events due to low lymphocyte counts are also quite common. These can occur months after treatment with Rituximab. One of the more commonly documented is Pneumonitis. There are many studies that document this as a rare complication, but no single study that summarizes them all. For more information go to our search page and type in "pneumonitis Rituximab" without the quotes, then choose either Blood Journal or the NLM as your site to search, and you will find much more information.
Additional information
How it all startedDevelopment of monoclonal antibodies began decades ago. But it was 1997 when Rituxan was first approved. It was at this point that some serious studies began, trying to figure out all the ways it could be used, and the best ways to use it. Below are some of those early studies, which many countries used as the basis for their own health agency approval process.
Effect of the addition of rituximab to front line therapy with cyclophosphamide,
doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone (CHOP) on the remission rate and time to
treatment failure (TTF) compared to CHOP alone in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL):
Results of a prospective randomized trial of the German Low Grade Lymphoma Study
Group (GLSG).
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rates, and survival rates for many forms
of B-cell lymphomas. It is now approved in most countries around the world.
Rituxan targets the