Second cancer risk after interferon therapy? [letter; comment]

Long‐term follow‐up of interferon‐alpha induction and low‐dose maintenance therapy in hairy cell leukemia

“…On the other hand, Kampmeier et al (17) found a significant increase of secondary malignancies in HCL patients treated with IFNa and explained this rather surprising finding by a disease related increased risk for secondary malignancies, irrespective of the treatment (1,18). However, several other studies could not confirm an increase of secondary malignancies in IFNa treated HCL patients (19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Moreover, IFNa treatment for hepatitis, renal cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, and multiple myeloma is not associated with an increased incidence of secondary cancers (24)(25)(26)(27)(28).…”

Current treatment strategies for patients with hairy cell leukemia

“…Among 69 patients treated with IFN-α2b followed for a median of 91 months, 13 (19%) developed a second malignancy, half of which were of hematologic origin. However, this association has not been uniformly observed (81). Given the fact that the purine analogs are immunosuppressive, it will be important to determine whether patients treated with either 2´-DCF or 2-CdA are at risk for second malignancies.…”

A case of Mollitias and Fragilitas Ossium – unusual presentation of hairy cell leukaemia followed by the diagnosis of nonsecretory myeloma

“…The occurrence of preceding, concurrent and subsequent secondary malignancies, both haematological and nonhaematological, has been reported and was found to be statistically significant in some series (Bernstein, Newton & Ross, 1990;Kampmeier et al, 1994;Au et al,1998;Chadha et al, 2005;Hisada et al, 2007) but not in others (Troussard, Henry-Amar & Flandrin, 1994;Kurzrock et al, 1997;Cheson et al, 1999;Flinn et al, 2000;Federico et al, 2002). Some reports have found an association with the type of therapy received whereas others (Au et al, 1998) have found a relation to the original tumour burden.…”