Publisher: Blood, January 12, 2006; DOI 10.1182/blood-2005-02-0833

Description: As part of the Third International Workshop on Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia, held in October 2004 in Paris, a consensus panel updated standard treatment recommendations for WM for both frontline and salvage therapies. The report from the panel is currently available online and will soon be printed in the journal Blood.

In summary, as part of its deliberations, the panel considered encouraging results from many clinical studies that looked at a variety of treatment options: extended dose rituximab, therapy with nucleoside analogues and alkylator agents, rituximab in combination with nucleoside analogues, nucleoside analogues plus alkylator agents, and combination chemotherapies, such as CHOP or cyclophosphamide and dexamethasone. The panel determined these were reasonable treatment options for WM patients and such therapeutic approaches were likely to yield results that are at least as good as if not better than the current recommended treatments.

Considerable progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of WM since its identification 60 years ago. These workshops draw together leading WM researchers from around the world, and are particularly instrumental in building our collective understanding of the disease. The next workshop will be held in Kos, Greece next June.