KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The study aimed to analyze outcomes of pediatric patients with non-B NHL, focusing on rare subtypes.
- There is limited knowledge on rare NHL treatment. Dedicated trials and therapy guidelines are urgently needed.
Non-B cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) represent over 30 different T/NK lymphoma subtypes, posing significant challenges for diagnosis and treatment, especially in pediatric patients. While the most common subtypes, T-cell lymphoblastic lymphomas (TLL) and anaplastic large cell lymphomas (ALCL), have established treatment protocols, rare non-B NHLs lack clear guidelines due to limited research and their exclusion from clinical trials.
Joanna Stankiewicz and the team aimed to analyze the clinical outcomes of pediatric patients with non-B NHL treated at a single oncology centre, with a particular focus on rare NHL subtypes.
Researchers retrospectively analyzed data from patients under 18 years old diagnosed with non-B NHL between 2002 and 2022. The study calculated the 5-year probability of overall survival (pOS) and event-free survival (pEFS) for the entire cohort and separately for patients with TLL and ALCL.Treatment for patients with rare non-B NHL was individualized based on physician expertise and available case reports.
The study included 26 children, 14 diagnosed with ALCL, 9 with TLL, and 3 with rare NHL subtypes. The rare subtypes included subcutaneous panniculitis-like T-cell lymphoma, extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma, and hydroa vacciniforme-like lymphoproliferative disease-associated lymphoma.
For the entire cohort, the 5-year pOS was 83.7%, and the 5-year pEFS was 72.4%. Patients with rare NHL were treated based on individualized therapy recommendations, guided by physicians’ expertise and available case report descriptions.
The study highlighted the challenges in treating rare NHLs in children due to the lack of knowledge about optimal therapeutic approaches. It emphasized the crucial need for clinical trials dedicated to uncommon NHL subtypes to develop evidence-based treatment guidelines and improve outcomes for these patients.
This research did not receive funding from any public, commercial, or not-for-profit agency.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39187326/
Stankiewicz J, Jabłońska A, Treichel P, et al. (2024). “Toward Inclusive Oncology: Challenges in the Therapy of Pediatric Non-B Non-Hodgkin Lymphomas.” In Vivo. 2024;38(5):2404-2409. doi:10.21873/invivo.13708
