A trial comparing CHOP and GEM-P chemotherapy for people with lymphoma (CHEMO-T)

Cancer type:

Blood cancers

Lymphoma

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 2

This trial compared CHOP chemotherapy and GEM-P chemotherapy for people with T-cell lymphoma who hadn’t had treatment yet.

It was supported by Cancer Research UK.

More about this trial

T cell lymphoma is a type of non Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Doctors often treat it with a combination of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin and vincristine chemotherapy with a steroid called prednisolone. This combination is known as CHOP.

But sometimes the cancer can come back after treatment. Doctors then often use a combination of gemcitabine and cisplatin chemotherapy with a steroid called methylprednisolone. This combination is known as GEM-P.

Researchers wanted to find out if GEM-P is useful as a first treatment for T cell lymphoma. In this trial they compared CHOP and GEM-P for people with T cell lymphoma who hadn’t had treatment yet.

The main aims of the trial were to find out:

if GEM-P works better than CHOP as a first treatment for T cell lymphoma
more about the side effects

Summary of results

This trial recruited 87 people with T cell lymphoma, a type of non Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). They had not had treatment for their lymphoma before.

The people taking part were put into 1 of 2 groups at random, and:

43 people had CHOP
44 people had GEM-P

The research team were able to assess how well the treatment worked in 74 of the people who took part. They found that the lymphoma had gone away in:

23 people (62%) who’d had CHOP
17 people (46%) who’d had GEM-P

They looked at how many people’s lymphoma had started to grow again, and it was about the same in each group. They then looked at how many people had died, and found it was:

19 people (44%) who’d had CHOP
15 people (34%) who’d had GEM-P

They also looked at side effects. They found the number of people who had at least one side effect that could be classed as serious was:

20 people (47%) who’d had CHOP
23 people (51%) who’d had GEM-P

More people who had CHOP had a drop in white blood cells and fever linked to a low white blood cell count. But more people who had GEM-P had a drop in platelets. More people who had GEM-P stopped treatment because of the side effects they were having.

The research team concluded that GEM-P was not better than CHOP as a first treatment for T cell lymphoma. Their recommendation is that doctors should continue to use CHOP to treat this group of patients.

We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) but may not have been published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the research team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.