Could (Disseminated and Residual) Minimal Disease be a useful prognostic marker in non-Hodgkin paediatric Lymphomas?

Abstract

Minimal Disseminated Disease (MDD) represents the small number of tumour cells in the patients' bone marrow at the time of diagnosis, whereas Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) represents the small number of tumour cells remaining in the bone marrow during treatment. Generally, MDD and MRD are measured by polymerase chain reaction, a highly sensitive technique. For a long time, bone marrow involvement has been considered an uncommon event in solid tumours. However, in recent years, several studies demonstrated that MDD and MRD could be powerful tools in paediatric non-Hodgkin lymphoma for stratifying patients in different prognostic groups. Risk stratification in future clinical trials on non-Hodgkin lymphoma based on these newly identified risk categories should be useful to improve therapies in order to increase survival for high-risk patients and decrease toxicity for low-risk patients.