Does prior Rituxan therapy take away “chemo naive” status?
Date: March 4, 2008 In one of my recent posts on Harvey’s Journal – Planning For Success I quoted a table from a recent M. D. Anderson paper on the response statistics of FCR combination in previously treated patients. In the breakout of patients into sub-categories based on their prior therapy exposure, there were 7 patients that had been exposed to Rituxan therapy and nothing else. 29% of these “Rituxan-virgins” got a CR, a far cry from the much higher percentage of CRs we saw in truly naïve patients who had not been treated with anything. This statistic drew a lot of attention and caused concern to some patients. Sorry to say, it does not surprise me with my somewhat dour attitude about life – there are no really free lunches out there. But it is a valid point that the sample size of this sub-group was small, only 7 patients. So, to get a more authoritative perspective on Rituxan therapy and impact on subsequent therapy options, I went straight to the source, one of the authors of t
