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The standard rituximab dose of 375 mg/m2 has been broadly applied for treatment of patients with B-cell lymphoproliferative and autoimmune disorders, despite a lack of pharmacokinetic data regarding specific disease entities and individual patients. To address this issue, investigators analyzed the impact of gender and age (≤60 vs. >60) on outcomes in three phase III, prospective, multicenter trials of combination chemotherapy with or without rituximab for patients with newly diagnosed, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
In the MInT and MegaCHOEP studies (of 823 and 262 young patients, respectively), males and females benefited equally from rituximab plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone. However, in the RICOVER-60 trial of 1222 older pati…