Several clinical studies have demonstrated that combination chemotherapy is superior to single agent chemotherapy in improving remission rate, duration of remission, and survival of the patients with non-Hodgkin´s lymphoma1,5,8,9,11). The most effective and popular
combination chemotherapy regimen to date for non-Hodgkin´s lymphoma consists of cyclophosphamide, vincristine and prednisone (COP or GVP). In more recent studies Levitt, Berd and co-workers, using both methotrexate and cytosine arabinoside after initial treatment with cyclophosphamide and vincristine reported excellent responses particularly in patients with histiocytic lymphoma in terms of response rate and long-term remission2,7). Cytosine arabinoside alone has not been proven effective except temporarily6). We used cytosine arabinoside in combination with cyclophosphamide and vincristine in intensive 5 day cycles, given every 3 weeks for the treatment of 30 patients with non-Hodgkin´s lymphoma. This paper reports the results of this combination therapy.
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