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Background: The effect of interferons in the correction of thrombocytosis in chronic myeloproliferative syndromes is well known. In this study the efficacy of alpha-2b interferon in a regimen of induction followed by a phase of sequential maintenance to progressively decreasing doses was evaluated with the aim of knowing the minimum doses necessary to maintain response., Methods: The response to treatment with alpha-2b interferon was prospectively studied in a group of 37 patients with chronic myeloproliferative syndromes with associated thrombocytosis (excluding chronic myeloid leukemia). Likewise, the toxicity of the treatment was analyzed., Results: Sixty-seven percent of the patients responded (platelets lower than 600 x 10(9)/1) to the daily administration of 3 or 5 MU of interferon. Forty percent of the patients who responded to the daily schedule of administration maintained the response upon receiving 3 doses weekly for 4 months. Half of the 8 patients who received 2 weekly doses of interferon for 4 months continued maintaining the responses. Only two of the 4 patients who received one sole weekly dose during the following 4 months maintained the response. Only one of the 37 patients who initiated treatment underwent progression of the symptoms present at the beginning of the study. Toxicity was high and was the cause of 12 discontinuations of treatment (32% of the patients) during the daily treatment phase (9 patients) or during maintenance of 3 weekly doses (3 patients). No toxicity was observed in the schedule of one or two weekly doses., Conclusions: Alpha-2b interferon is effective in the treatment of thrombocytosis of the chronic myeloproliferative syndromes (excluding chronic myeloid leukemia) when administered daily and is ever less so when the doses are spaced at 3, 2 or 1 week. The toxicity of interferon treatment is high when administered at affective doses.

Eleven patients with Hodgkin's disease were treated with high-dose chemotherapy followed by autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT). Four patients were resistant to initial therapy and 7 patients had relapsed but were progressing under second or third line therapy. The median time from initial diagnosis to transplantation was 44 months (range, 16 to 82). In 9 patients pre-ABMT consisted on high-dose CVB cyclophosphamide, etoposide and carmustine) chemotherapy, one patient was treated with BACT protocol (carmustine, cytosine arabinoside, cyclophosphamide and thioguanine) and other patient was treated with high-dose of busulfan and melphalan. In 8 patients complete remission (CR) was achieved, in one the remission was partial, one failed to respond and one case was not evaluable due to early death. Among CR patients, 2 died from late toxicity, and the other 6 remain in CR off therapy, one of them more than 33 months after ABMT. High-dose therapy produce severe myelosuppression in all patients. There were 3 treatment related death: one early death due to hemorrhagic myocarditis, one veno-occlusive disease of the liver and one due to cytomegalovirus sepsis. The high complete response rate in these heavily pretreated patients suggests that there may be an indication for high-dose therapy and ABMT in earlier resistant Hodgkin's disease. Moreover under such conditions, treatment related morbidity would be expected to be lower.