FOLLICULAR LYMPHOMA: THE MANAGEMENT OF ELDERLY PATIENT

Abstract

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is the most common indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma, typically affected mature adults and elderly, with a median age at diagnosis of 65 years. The natural history of FL appears to have been favorably impacted by the introduction of Rituximab. Randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that the addition of rituximab to standard chemotherapy induction has improved the overall survival and new strategies of chemo-immunotherapy, such as Bendamustine combined with Rituximab, showed optimal results on response and lower hematological toxicity, becoming one of the standard treatments, particularly in elderly. Moreover maintenance therapy with Rituximab demonstrated improvement of progression-free survival. Despite these exciting results, FL is still an incurable disease. It remains a critical unmet clinical need finding new prognostic factors to better identify poor outcome patients, to reduce the risk of transformation and to explore new treatment strategies, especially for patients not candidate to intensive chemotherapy regimens, such as elderly patients. Some progresses were already done with novel agents, but larger and more validated studies are needed. Elderly patients are the larger portion of patients with FL and represent a subgroup with higher treatment difficulties, because of comorbidities and smaller spectrum for treatment choice. Further studies, focused on elderly follicular lymphoma patients, with their peculiar characteristics, are needed in order to define the best tailored treatment at diagnosis and at the time of relapse in this setting.