impact in DLBCL. [14][15][16][17] Of the macrophages, classically activated M1 type TAM have been described as "good", acting to prevent the growth of tumor tissue, whereas the alternative M2 type TAM may have an opposite effect promoting angiogenesis and tumor development. [18][19][20] Importantly, however, studies in follicular lymphoma have demonstrated that the prognostic significance of the tumor microenvironment and especially macrophages is highly dependent on a given therapy. [21][22][23] In the present study, we investigated how the combination of rituximab with chemotherapy influences non-malignant inflammatory cell-associated clinical outcome in DLBCL. Among all studied markers for macrophages, dendritic, and lymphoid cells, we found that pretreatment gene expression of a macrophage marker CD68 and immunohistochemically defined CD68+ TAM content had a positive prognostic impact on the survival of DLBCL patients treated with chemoimmunotherapy, whereas in patients treated without rituximab, CD68 + TAM content was associated with a poor outcome. Methods Patients and samplesThe screening cohort consisted of prospectively collected DLBCL patients who were less than 65 years old and had primary high-risk (age-adjusted IPI score 2-3) disease. They were treated in the Nordic phase II NLG-LBC-04 protocol with dose-dense chemoimmunotherapy followed by systemic central nervous system prophylaxis. 24 The patients in this correlative study represent a subset of patients in the main clinical trial and were selected on the basis of DLBCL histology, the availability of fresh frozen tissue for RNA extraction and exon arrays (gene expression cohort; n=38) and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded lymphoma tissue containing adequate material for the preparation of tissue microarrays (TMA; immunohistochemistry cohort; n=59), and the patients' consent to correlative studies. Details of the screening cohort are provided in Table 1, the Online Supplementary Material and Online Supplementary Table S1.The clinical protocol and sampling were approved by Institutional Review Boards, National Medical Agencies and Ethics Committees in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and the trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01502982.To validate the findings, three independent retrospective series of chemoimmunotherapy-treated DLBCL patients were used. In order to confirm gene expression data, we used RNA sequencing data from 92 patients generated by the Cancer Genome Characterization Initiative (CGCI; dbGaP database applied study accession: phs000532.v3.p1) 25,26 and oligonucleotide-based microarray data from 233 DLBCL patients generated by the Lymphoma/Leukemia Molecular Profiling Project (LLMPP; GEO dataset: GSE10846).10 Both cohorts are subsets of the original study populations treated with a R-CHOP-like regimen based on the availability of complete expression data and clinical information (Online Supplementary Table S2).In order to confirm the immunohistochemical data, an independent population-based series of ...

Male gender is an adverse prognostic factor in Hodgkin's lymphoma, but no such association has yet been established in non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Here, we have evaluated whether gender has prognostic impact on the survival of patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the postrituximab era of lymphoma therapies. The study populations consisted of 217 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and 110 follicular lymphoma (FL) patients treated with immunochemotherapy. Hundred and sixty chemotherapy-treated DLBCL patients served as a control group. According to Kaplan-Meier analyses, female patients had a significantly better progression-free survival than men both in DLBCL (4 yr PFS 75% vs. 60%; P= 0.013) and in FL (4 yr PFS 68% vs. 52%, P=0.036) patients treated with immunochemotherapy. In chemotherapy-treated DLBCL patients, no difference in survival between the genders was found. The results support the idea that women seem to respond better to rituximab.

Our aim was to construct and test an intervention programme to eradicate cough and cold medicine (CCM) prescriptions for children treated in a nationwide healthcare service company. The study was carried out in the largest private healthcare service company in Finland with a centralised electronic health record system allowing for real-time, doctor-specific practice monitoring. The step-by-step intervention consisted of company-level dissemination of educational materials to doctors and families, educational staff meetings, continuous monitoring of prescriptions, and targeted feedback. Outreach visits were held in noncompliant units. Finally, those physicians who most often prescribed CCM were directly contacted. During the intervention period (2017–2020), there were more than one million paediatric visits. Prescriptions of CCMs to children were completely eradicated in 41% of units and the total number of CCM prescriptions decreased from 6738 to 744 (89%). During the fourth intervention year, CCMs containing opioid derivatives were prescribed for only 0.2% of children aged < 2 years. The decrease in prescriptions was greatest in general practitioners (5.2 to 1.1%). In paediatricians, the prescription rates decreased from 1.5 to 0.2%. The annual costs of CCMs decreased from €183,996 to €18,899 (89.7%). For the intervention, the developers used 343 h and the attended doctors used 684 h of work time during the 4-year intervention. The costs used for developing, implementing, reporting, evaluating, communicating, and data managing formed approximately 11% of total intervention costs.Conclusion: The study showed that a nationwide systematic intervention to change cough medicine prescription practices is feasible and requires only modest financial investments. What is Known:• Cough and cold medicines (CCM) are not effective or safe, especially for children aged 6 years.• Although the use of CCMs has been declining, caregivers continue to administer CCMs to children, and some physicians still prescribe them even for preschool children. What is New:• A nationwide systematic intervention can significantly and cost effectively change CCM prescription habits of paediatricians, general practitioners, and other specialists.• Electronic health records provide additional tools for operative guideline implementation and real-time quality monitoring, including recommendations of useless or harmful treatments.