With improved treatments, especially the use of anti-cancer immunotherapies, more than two-thirds of all patients diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) will survive.
With improved treatments, especially the use of anti-cancer immunotherapies, more than two-thirds of all patients diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) will survive. However, after treatment, patients are at a small but real risk of developing a new cancer, called a second primary cancer. Now a Colorado study of long term DLBCL survivors shows, for the first time, that the stage at which DLBCL is originally diagnosed impacts the types of second cancers that may form after treatment.
“We have made tremendous progress in this field, and as a result, patients are living longer. Thus, survivorship has taken center stage in the management of these lymphomas. Given that these patients are at an increased risk of developing second primary cancers, our goal is to identify risk factors that can predict or mitigate this risk,” says Manali Kamdar, MD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and Clinical Director of Lymphoma Services at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.
The study explored the outcomes of 26,038 patients diagnosed with DLBCL between 1973 and 2010, more than half of whom were diagnosed with stage 1 or 2 disease, and a little less than half of whom were diagnosed with stage 3 or 4 disease. Overall, 13 percent of survivors went on to develop second primary cancers.
“We’ve known that, genetically, early and late stage disease is different, and our hypothesis was that the type and timing of secondary primary cancers may thus be different as well,” Kamdar says.
Read more at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Image: Manali Kamdar, MD, and colleagues show that genetic differences in lymphomas may predict patterns of secondary cancer development years later. (Credit: University of Colorado Cancer Center)
