title: Treatment of low-grade gastric MALT-lymphoma unresponsive to Helicobacter pylori therapy: a pooled-data analysis.
abstract: The most favourable therapeutic strategy for gastric MALT-lymphoma not responding to Helicobacter pylori eradication still remains unclear, neither official guidelines nor randomised studies being available. We therefore performed a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the efficacy of different therapeutic approaches in these patients. Data regarding 315 patients were valuable, and lymphoma remission following the first therapeutic attempt was achieved in 90.1% cases. The most used therapy was radiotherapy (112 patients), followed by surgery (80 patients) and chemotherapy (68 patients), whilst a combination therapy was less frequent. Radiotherapy achieved a higher remission rate as compared to chemotherapy (97.3 vs. 85.3%; P = 0.007), being similar to surgery (97.3 vs. 92.5%; P = 0.2). No difference emerged when comparing lymphoma remission rate achieved by a single therapy with that of combined treatments (89.6 vs. 96.4%; P = 0.6). This is the first pooled-data analysis assessing the efficacy of different oncologic therapeutic approaches to treat gastric MALT-lymphoma unresponsive to H. pylori eradication. Radiotherapy seems to be the most suitable treatment in these patients.
authors.affiliation: Gastroenterology and Digestive Endoscopy, Nuovo Regina Margherita Hospital, Via E Morosini 30, 00153 Rome, Italy. zullo66@yahoo.it
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zullo
authors.forename: Cesare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hassan
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Andriani
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cristofari
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bassanelli
authors.forename: Gian Paolo
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Spinelli
authors.forename: Silverio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tomao
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Morini
mesh_terms: D016480:Helicobacter pylori / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D018442:Lymphoma, B-Cell, Marginal Zone / Q000382:microbiology / Q000628:therapy*; D008228:Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin / Q000382:microbiology / Q000628:therapy*; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000379:methods; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000382:microbiology / Q000628:therapy*