The Impact of Histological Subtypes on Outcome in Patients with Mantle Cell Lymphoma Treated with or without Autologous Stem Cell Transplant.

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) accounts for 7% of all non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, with median overall survival in most series of 3–4 years. MCL has been classified into three histological subtypes which include diffuse MCL, nodular MCL, and blastic MCL. A relatively small number of studies have examined the prognostic importance of histology in MCL. The aim of this study was to determine if the progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) rates in mantle cell lymphoma differ among histological subtypes. A total of 102 patients with MCL, treated by the Nebraska Lymphoma Study Group between January 1986 and June 2006, with a median age of 60 years (range 32–89 years) were available for study. Patients were treated with HyperCVAD or a CHOP like regimen with or without rituximab and autologous hematopoetic stem cell transplant (ASCT). All cases were confirmed using cyclin D1 staining. Regardless of treatment, our study failed to show a significant difference in PFS (p=0.26) or OS (P=0.06) among histological subtypes. There was a trend for better survival in patients with nodular MCL. However, in patients receiving ASCT, there was a significantly higher PFS (P=0.0001) and OS (p=0.0005) compared to patients not receiving ASCT. The 3 year PFS for patients receiving HyperCVAD followed by ASCT was 64% compared to the 3 year PFS for HyperCVAD alone of 0 (p=0.008). In conclusion, we failed to show association between histological subtypes of MCL with outcomes regardless of treatment. However, the use of ASCT improved survival.