Follicular lymphoma: a therapeutic update.

Follicular lymphoma is the most common low-grade non Hodgkin's lymphoma. This indolent disease is usually characterised by an indolent course with a continuous pattern of relapse and a median survival of 10 years. Radiotherapy can be curative in a small proportion of patients with very localized disease, but the majority of patients have advanced disease at diagnosis and it is not clear that any current therapy is curative in this situation. In the last 5 years we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of patients receiving emerging therapies such as antibody therapy combined or not with chemotherapy, radioimmunotherapy or stem cell transplantation. In this article, we will review the available treatments of follicular lymphomas, with special emphasis on published phase III trials.