GHSG HD21
A new brentuximab-based intensive regimen matched Europe's most effective (and most toxic) chemotherapy with far fewer side effects.
Overview
GHSG HD21, trial NCT02661503 sponsored by the German Hodgkin Study Group and published in the Lancet in 2024, showed that a new brentuximab-based intensive regimen, BrECADD, matched and then beat escalated BEACOPP, Europe's most effective and most toxic chemotherapy for advanced Hodgkin lymphoma, with far fewer side effects. It randomised about 1,500 patients aged 18 to 60 to PET-guided BrECADD or escalated BEACOPP for four to six cycles, met non-inferiority and then superiority on progression-free survival at four and five years, and reduced treatment-related morbidity while preserving fertility markers. Nuclide links it to Hodgkin lymphoma, PET-adapted therapy, brentuximab vedotin, Peter Borchmann, the German Hodgkin Study Group and the ECHELON-1 and S1826 papers. Whether an intensive regimen is still needed when nivolumab-AVD has performed so well is the open question.
- 94.3 vs 90.9 out of 100 alive without the cancer growing at 4 years with BrECADD compared with eBEACOPP; 3.4 more per 100.
- Roughly one extra person helped for every 29 treated. That is a rough figure taken from the two percentages, not a guarantee for any one person.
- Put another way, the treated group had about 34 percent lower chance of the event at any given time (hazard ratio 0.66, likely range 0.45 to 0.97).
- This is a surrogate endpoint: it measures the cancer being controlled or absent on scans and tests, which often, but not always, translates into living longer.
- 42 vs 59 out of 100 reached this endpoint with BrECADD compared with eBEACOPP; 17 fewer per 100.
- On this measure the first group did worse, not better.
- This endpoint is not one of the standard survival or response measures; read it alongside the trial's primary result.
- These results apply to the people the trial enrolled: Untreated advanced-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma, age 18-60: PET-guided BrECADD vs escalated BEACOPP. People in a different situation may not see the same effect.
Numbers are from the trial as recorded here; see the source links in the table below. This is orientation, not medical advice: ask your team how closely the trial population matches you.
1,500 enrolled.
Similar pages
not linked directly; found by shared links- TrialRATHL
Shares Deauville five-point scale for PET, PET-adapted (response-adapted) therapy.
- IndicationDiffuse large B-cell lymphoma
Shares Deauville five-point scale for PET, PET-adapted (response-adapted) therapy.
- TechnologyFDG PET
Shares Deauville five-point scale for PET, PET-adapted (response-adapted) therapy.