Prednisone

The authors' conclusion is that ibrutinib-rituximab should be considered a new standard-of-care option for first-line treatment of older patients with mantle-cell lymphoma. The subgroup split means it is clearly better than R-CHOP and roughly equivalent to bendamustine-rituximab.

R-CHOP remains the standard first-line regimen for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The trial is also the clearest lesson in the disease about adopting a regimen on single-arm data: dose-adjusted EPOCH-R had been used widely for a decade before this comparison existed.

Four cycles rather than six for young patients with limited-stage, low-risk aggressive B-cell lymphoma. The saving is two cycles of anthracycline and vincristine in people who will live for decades afterwards.

Confirmation, by a different route from HD18, that the interim scan can safely direct de-escalation in advanced Hodgkin lymphoma, and that most of the toxicity of escalated BEACOPP can be avoided in the 84 per cent of patients who respond early.

A failure worth reading: the drug worked where patients could tolerate the regimen it was added to, and harmed where they could not. It is the strongest argument in lymphoma for designing first-line combinations around what an older patient can finish.

The evidence that early follicular lymphoma is less often confined to the radiation field than staging suggests, and that a short course of systemic treatment after radiotherapy reduces relapse. It is also the reason modern practice stages this disease with positron emission tomography.

The interim scan should be used to intensify treatment in early Hodgkin lymphoma, not to withhold radiotherapy. The 99.0 per cent five-year progression-free survival in the scan-negative favourable group with combined-modality treatment is the number any radiotherapy-sparing strategy has to match.

Abiraterone with androgen deprivation is a standard first-line doublet for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, consistent with the STAMPEDE result.