New
Service for TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com
readers...roll mouse over, click on
highlighted links in stories to review items
from Amazon
Now, keep up to date
with daily feeds of newly posted stories
about America's Seniors...click on the box
to the left
Outlook improves for patients with
non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
Newswise — Five- and 10-year survival rates for patients with
non-Hodgkin lymphoma appear to have
increased from the 1990s to the early 21st
century, according to a report in the March
10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine,
one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma includes several cancers of the immune
system that occur in approximately 20.4 of
every 100,000 individuals, according to
background information in the article.
Treatment for the condition has evolved
rapidly in recent years.
Dianne Pulte, M.D., of the German Cancer Research Center,
Heidelberg, and colleagues analyzed data
from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End
Results (SEER) Program of the U.S. National
Cancer Institute.
Survival rates were calculated based on two-year time periods
between 1990 and 2004 within which patients
were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as
well as by age group (15 to 44, 45 to 54, 55
to 64, 65 to 74 and 75 years or older), sex,
race, tumor location (i.e. whether the
disease was nodal [in the lymph nodes] or
extranodal [in a site other than the lymph
nodes]) and histologic subtype (to classify
tumors as high-grade or low-grade).
“Overall, five-year relative survival increased from 50.4 percent
to 66.8 percent, and 10-year relative
survival increased from 39.4 percent to 56.3
percent between 1990 to 1992 and 2002 to
2004,” the authors write.
“Improvements were most pronounced in patients younger than 45
years (plus 26.8 and plus 27.1 percentage
points for five- and 10-year survival,
respectively), but improvements were seen in
all age groups, in both sexes, in both nodal
and extranodal disease and in both low-grade
and high-grade disease. Improvements in
prognosis were less in black patients than
in white patients, especially in younger
black patients.”
Two factors may explain these improvements, the authors note.
“One is advances in therapy that have
occurred between 1990 and 2004, particularly
the introduction of antibody therapy for
non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” they write.
“Treatment with antibody therapy and chemotherapy has extended
life expectancy in many cases, but whether
and how often this extension represents a
true cure is still unknown.”
In addition, improvements in the treatment of HIV have reduced
the occurrence of HIV-related non-Hodgkin
lymphomas and also made them easier to
treat.
“Our estimates of long-term survival in
patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma obtained
by the period analysis method for the 2002
to 2004 period are much higher than
previously available survival estimates,
which mostly pertain to patients diagnosed
in the 1990s,” the authors conclude.
“Timely disclosure of the improvements in
survival achieved in patients, clinicians,
researchers and the public is essential.”
...
...
...