Sustained long-term remissions with weekly interferon maintenance therapy in hairy cell leukemia

This study evaluates the efficacy of weekly α-interferon (IFN) maintenance therapy in hairy cell leukaemia (HCL), a disease that remains incurable.

Nine patients (six male, three female, aged 41-69 yrs) with hairy cell leukaemia (HCL) received IFN 3mU s.c. once weekly as long-term maintenance therapy after achieving optimal clinical and hematological response to initial therapy with thrice weekly IFN.

Eight of the nine patients are in a state of sustained response at 3-17 years (median 12 years).

Our results are similar to those from three previous studies using long-term IFN maintenance therapy, bringing the total number of patients in sustained remission to 118. We hope these reports will lead to a multi-centre, phase III study of IFN maintenance therapy (including pegylated IFN, given less frequently) in HCL patients achieving optimal response to initial therapy, be it IFN or a purine analogue.