Human interferon-beta in the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Interferon has potent antiviral, antiproliferative, and immunomodulating properties [9, 101. Leukocyte and fibroblast interferon have been applied in the treatment of human malignancies. Due to the limited availability of interferon, only small numbers of patients have been treated so far. According to the literature a total of 106 patients with malignant lymphomas have been treated, including five patients with Hodgkin's disease, 65 patients with multiple myeloma, nine patients with acute lymphatic leukemia, 14 patients with chronic lymphatic leukemia, nine patients with nodular poorly differentiated lymphocytic non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and four patients with diffuse histiocytic non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Eight of the 106 patients achieved complete remission and 56 showed partial regression [l, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12-15]. A relatively good response was observed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma of favorable prognosis, with 15 partial regressions and two complete remissions out of 23 patients. These results encouraged us to study the effect of fibroblast interferon (Hu-IFN-beta) in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma of low-grade malignancy. We describe our results obtained with ten patients. Preliminary results have been reported recently