Abstract
Recently, immunoglobulin G Fc receptor (FcgammaR) polymorphisms have been found to correlate with the clinical response to rituximab or idiotype vaccine in patients with follicular lymphoma. Two critical questions are whether the FcgammaR polymorphisms correlate with the clinical outcomes after chemotherapy alone in patients with follicular lymphoma and whether they can be explained by linking to underlying biology of follicular lymphoma. This is an important issue because the clinical decisions about the use of antibody therapy may be based on the FcgammaR polymorphisms of these patients. Here, we analyzed the FcgammaRIIIa 158 V/F, FcgammaRIIa 131 H/R, and FcgammaRIIb 232 I/T polymorphisms in a group of 188 patients with follicular lymphoma who were treated with chemotherapy without rituximab initially. In the current study, FcgammaR polymorphisms neither correlated with response rate or time to progression after induction chemotherapy, nor with time to the initial therapy or overall survival after diagnosis. Our results confirm that the correlation between FcgammaR polymorphisms and clinical outcome is specific to immunotherapy such as rituximab and idiotype vaccination, and not due to any effect on the underlying clinical behavior of the disease or chemotherapy response.