Who can enter
- Children and adolescents who were newly diagnosed with lymphoblastic lymphoma (LBL)
- Age: up to 18 years
Goal
The goal of the entire study is to improve treatment and diagnostics for children and adolescents with LBL. Specifically, we want to see if we can reduce the risk of the disease returning to the central nervous system after treatment.
We also want to investigate in children with high-risk variants of the disease whether more intensive treatment ensures better treatment outcomes.
Background
An LBL is a form of lymphoma. It involves the uncontrolled division and growth of lymphocytes, a particular type of white blood cells. These form a tumor in a lymph node that easily spreads to other lymph nodes, and sometimes to organs and tissues.
The treatment of LBL consists of several components. During the first phase (induction phase) of treatment, one of the medicines we give is prednisone. Leukemia is a disease very similar to LBL. If children and adolescents with leukemia are given the drug dexamethasone instead of prednisone during the induction phase, the disease returns less often. Therefore, we want to see if LBL also recurs less often if we give dexamethasone instead of prednisone during the induction phase. To investigate this, we want to divide the children participating in the study into two groups:
- A group receiving the standard treatment with prednisone
- A group receiving dexamethasone instead of prednisone
Then we will look at how many children in both groups had recurrence of the disease to determine which treatment in the induction phase works best for LBL.
The induction phase is followed by the consolidation phase and the treatment phase "protocol M" of treatment. In children with high-risk variants of the disease, we want to do an additional study during these phases. Children with leukemia who received additional medication during these phases had a better chance of being cured. We want to see if children with LBL also have a better chance of cure when we give extra drugs during these phases. To investigate this, we want to divide the children with a high-risk variant of the disease into two groups:
- A group that receives the standard treatment during the consolidation phase and treatment phase ‘protocol M’
- A group receiving additional medications during the consolidation phase and treatment phase ‘protocol M’.
Then we will compare the results of both treatments. This will help us determine which treatment works best in children with high-risk LBL.