Interesting publication on benefits of transplant

I rarely re-post other articles -- there are other blogs for that sort of thing.  But this one struck me as important.

There has been considerable debate about whether or not novel drugs alone versus novel drugs plus transplant would achieve the same outcomes.  Dr. Berenson in Los Angeles, to name one vocal proponent, believes this to be the case and that there is no benefit from transplantation.

I've not dug into this study other than to read the abstract, but it does show that overall survival and progression-free survival were both superior when transplantation was part of the regimen.

Bear in mind, as well, this was a single transplant.  Tandem transplantation should be superior still, if in fact this data is accurate.

Food for thought.

Note: some considerations with respect to the study: we don't know if the non-transplant patients were transplant-eligible, we don't know if the type of disease (IgX, kappa vs. lambda, and most importantly risk assessment) was evenly distributed, etc.

Still, while maybe not as statistically significant as we'd like, it's at least a data point, even if anecdotal.

I will likely ask Dr. Paul Richardson about this on this week's CurePanel talk on the 24th of this month, where the topic is "To Transplant or Not to Transplant."  If you have any questions you'd like me to ask, please let me know!