What are the long-term outcomes following bendamustine treatment?

This study examined the long-term safety and effectiveness of bendamustine (Treanda) in lymphoma and leukemia. This study concluded that bendamustine is a safe and effective therapy for these patients.

Bendamustine has been shown to have high effectiveness and few side effects for a wide range of lymphomas. This drug is currently used for lymphoma and leukemia that does not respond to rituximab (Rituxan).

Bendamustine is a chemotherapy drug. This type of treatment kills both cancer cells and healthy cells by damaging DNA. As a result, bendamustine treatment may lead to secondary cancers, which develop in 4% of patients. This and other long-term side effects of bendamustine treatment remain under investigation.

This study involved 194 lymphoma or leukemia patients. 32.5% of patients had chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma. 32% had follicular lymphoma. 9.8% had mantle cell lymphoma. 7.2% had diffuse large b-cell lymphoma, and 1.5% had Hodgkin's lymphoma.

 54.1% of patients received prior treatment for their disease. Of these, 76.2% achieved a complete response (CR; complete disappearance of all signs of cancer) or a partial response (PR; tumor shrinkage). 23.7% of patients had history of another cancer. 86.1% of patients combined bendamustine with rituximab or another nonchemotherapy agent (7.7%). The average follow-up period was 31.2 months.

82.4% of patients achieved a CR or PR (overall response rate; ORR). 86.5% of first-line-treated patients and 77.3% of salvage-treated patients achieved a CR or PR. 7.7% of patients did not respond to bendamustine, and received salvage chemotherapy or immunotherapy. Of these, 26.7% achieved a CR or PR.

16.6% of patients had secondary cancers or relapse. 10.8% of these cases were new types of cancer, including non-melanoma skin cancer (57.1%), prostate cancer (14.3%), and renal cancer (14.3%). 62.9% of patients also reported infections. The most common infections were pneumonia (28.4%), upper respiratory infection (27.3%), and herpes (15.5%). 52.5% of infections occurred during treatment and 32% occurred after treatment.  3.6% of patients discontinued treatment because of side effects.

This study concluded that bendamustine is a safe and effective treatment option for patients with lymphomas.

This study looked back in time to analyze data. This analysis depended on patient charts, and documentation differed between physicians. As a result, the collected data may be incomplete. Also, the original sample size was 248, but some patients were lost during follow-up or did not complete treatment. This further limits this study’s analysis.

38.1% of the new cancer cases in this study (10.8%) occurred after additional treatments. As a result, whether bendamustine treatment caused these cancers is difficult to determine.