ACVBP Plus Rituximab Versus CHOP Plus Rituximab in Patients With Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma and Age-adjusted IPI of 1

This phase III multicentric open label randomized study is based on the results of previous LNH 93-5 and LNH98-5 studies. The LNH93-5 study has shown that the ACVBP regimen gave a longer EFS (39% vs 29% at 5 years, p=0.005) and a longer overall survival (46% vs 38% at 5 years, p=0.036) than CHOP in patients aged between 61 and 69 with an IPI score ≥1. However ACVBP had a more important toxicity and a higher treatment related mortality (13% vs 7%, p\<0.01), specially after 65 years. In younger patients ACVBP is better tolerated. The addition of Rituximab to standard CHOP (R-CHOP) has been shown in LNH98-5 study to improve complete remission rate (CR), event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) in elderly patients with B-DLCL. Considering only patients with an aa-IPI score of 1, the 2 year EFS was 75% in the R-CHOP group as compared with 42% in the CHOP group. This study is designed to test whether addition of rituximab to ACVBP is better than R-CHOP in patients younger than 60. Primary endpoint is event-free survival, we expect a gain in 2 years-EFS of 10% in R-ACVBP group as compared with R-CHOP group. This study is a multicentric, phase III open-label, randomized trial evaluating the efficacy of ACVBP+rituximab compared to CHOP+rituximab in patients aged from 18 to 59 years with non previously treated diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and one factor of the age-adjusted international prognostic index