Background: This monocentric retrospective study describes the treatment patterns and outcomes of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients.
Methods: Adult CLL patients treated between 1992 and 2022 were included. The time to next treatment (TTNT) was defined as the time from the treatment's start to the start of a subsequent therapy or death.
Measurable residual disease (MRD) is defined as the presence of residual cancer cells after treatment in patients with clinically undetectable disease, who would otherwise be considered in complete remission. It is a highly sensitive parameter which indicates the disease burden and predicts survival in this setting of patients. In recent years, MRD has gained a role in many hematological malignancies as a surrogate endpoint for clinical trials: undetectable MRD has been correlated to longer progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic lymphocytic leukemia can evolve to an aggressive lymphoma-in most of the cases diffuse large B cells lymphoma, rarely Hodgkin lymphoma-and this complication is defined Richter syndrome (RS). Immunogenotypic features that characterize RS include unmutated IgHV status with high prevalence of IgHV4-39/D6-13/J5 sequence; deletion of chromosome 17p or 11q; activation of oncogenes as NOTCH1 and c-MYC; inactivation of onco-suppressors as TP53 and CDKN2A; high expression of CD38 in lymph-nodes. The prognosis of this condition is very poor: patients experience a rapid clinical deterioration with frequent therapeutic failure since the current options include suboptimal strategies as standard chemo-immunotherapy followed by hematopoietic stem cells transplantation or enrollment in clinical trials which investigate the efficacy of target drugs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSecondary antibody deficiency (SAD) is a frequent manifestation of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that increases the risk of infections. However, no formal guideline are available regarding the eligibility for prophylaxis or the delivery method, dosage, frequency of administration and duration of immunoglobulin replacement therapy (IgRT). The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and safety of subcutaneous IgRT (SCIg) and its impact on quality of life (QoL) of CLL pts in the Covid-19 era.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBest Pract Res Clin Haematol
June 2021
Bone marrow transplantation is a major therapeutic option for patients with acquired severe aplastic anaemia: improved survival has been achieved in younger patients, thanks to better donor selection, conditioning regimens and graft versus host disease prophylaxis, together with improved supportive care, including diagnosis and treatment of opportunistic infections. This has not been the case for older patients over the age of 40 years. We will discuss transplantation platforms as used for different donor types and we will analyse major breakthroughs of the last years: the combination of Fludarabine and cyclophosphamide as a conditioning regimen, the use of alternative donors including HLA haploidentical related donors and new strategies to prevent acute and chronic graft versus host disease, including post transplantation Cyclophosphamide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of this review is to update the current status of allogeneic hemopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCT) for patients with myelofibrosis (MF). We have first summarized the issue of an indication for allogeneic HSCT, discussing several prognostic scoring systems, developed to predict the outcome of MF, and therefore to identify patients who will benefit of an allogeneic HSCT. Patients with low risk MF are usually not selected for a transplant, whereas patients with intermediate or high risk MF are eligible.
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