My name is Sarah Rutherford and I'm an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. I have a really exciting study to tell you about that I think is likely to change the treatment of older patients, 60 and older, with advanced stage classic Hodgkin lymphoma. There was a large study presented earlier this year, 2023, at the ASCO meeting called S1826 and it looked at two different novel type treatments in combination with chemotherapy for newly diagnosed patients with stage 3 and 4 Hodgkin lymphoma and those treatments are called nivolumab AVD and brontuxumab Vodotin AVD. We looked at the older patient population, which is about 100 patients on this study, and we found that the nivolumab AVD was much better tolerated, less GI side effects like nausea and diarrhea, less numbness and tingling of the fingers and toes, less infections compared to brontuxumab Vodotin AVD. In addition, what is really exciting is that this treatment worked a lot better. We have about a year of follow-up thus far and 93% of patients were still in remission at the time of data cutoff for the nivolumab AVD treatment and it was about 30% less of patients in the other arm that remained without remission at that point. So I'm really thankful for this regimen. I've already started using it actually for patients who are 60 and older, again, nivolumab AVD and I think it's really poised to change the standard of care for many patients who are older with classic Hodgkin lymphoma.
HealthTree • December 19, 2023