Lotfi Benboubker, Meletios A Dimopoulos, Angela Dispenzieri, John Catalano, Andrew R Belch, Michele Cavo, Antonello Pinto, Katja Weisel, Heinz Ludwig, Nizar Bahlis, Anne Banos, Mourad Tiab, Michel Delforge, Jamie Cavenagh, Catarina Geraldes, Je-Jung Lee, Christine Chen, Albert Oriol, Javier de la Rubia, Lugui Qiu, Darrell J White, Daniel Binder, Kenneth Anderson, Jean-Paul Fermand, Philippe Moreau, Michel Attal, Robert Knight, Guang Chen, Jason Van Oostendorp, Christian Jacques, Annette Ervin-Haynes, Hervé Avet-Loiseau, Cyrille Hulin, Thierry Facon
BACKGROUND: The combination melphalan-prednisone-thalidomide (MPT) is considered a standard therapy for patients with myeloma who are ineligible for stem-cell transplantation. However, emerging data on the use of lenalidomide and low-dose dexamethasone warrant a prospective comparison of the two approaches. METHODS: We randomly assigned 1623 patients to lenalidomide and dexamethasone in 28-day cycles until disease progression (535 patients), to the same combination for 72 weeks (18 cycles; 541 patients), or to MPT for 72 weeks (547 patients)...
September 4, 2014: New England Journal of Medicine