During the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the MPN Hub spoke to Ghaith Abu-Zeinah, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, US. We asked, Does interferon alpha prolong survival and prevent progression in patients with polycythemia vera (PV)?
PV is a disease associated with shorter survival due to short-term complications, such as thrombosis, and long-term complications of progression to myelofibrosis and transformation to acute leukemia, which are associated with poor prognosis. The current treatment guidelines for PV recommend phlebotomy only for low-risk patients and, for a long time, these guidelines favored hydroxyurea over interferon alfa for the initial treatment of high-risk patients.
In this podcast, Abu-Zeinah shares the key findings of a retrospective study comparing myelofibrosis-free survival and overall survival of 470 patients with PV treated with recombinant interferon alfa, hydroxyurea, or phlebotomy only.
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