Breakthrough Treatments for Neurolymphomatosis
A breakthrough in treatment
This patient’s care team decided to treat the NL with a combined bendamustine and rituximab (BR) treatment. Bendamustine is known to be effective for treating recurrences of indolent lymphoma, but there is no evidence of the medication crossing the blood-nerve barrier, which is necessary to treat neurolymphomatosis. This patient received six courses of the BR treatment. After just 4 days, the patient’s pain began to dissipate, and after 2 weeks the pain had completely gone away. Following completion of the treatment, MRI showed “no sign of the lesion.” Prior to this case, there had been no recorded evidence of bendamustine crossing the blood-brain barrier and effectively treating NL.
