Extracorporeal photopheresis in elderly patient with refractory mycosis fungoides

BACKGROUND: Mycosis fungoides (MF) are rare cutaneous T-cell lymphomas with an indolent long-term clinical course in elderly patients. The more advanced stages of the illness may require systemic chemotherapy, extracorporeal photophoresis (ECP) and/or radiotherapy (including total body irradiation), denileukin diftitox, alemtuzumab and allogeneic stem cell transplantation. ECP is unique among these treatment modalities because it specifically induces an immune reaction directed against T cells. METHODS: We report a case of a 61-year-old Caucasian woman with MF, non-responder to the first line treatment, treated with ECP with very well fastly response. RESULTS: The treatment was evaluated with several parameters and among these, the one that gave the greatest correspondence to the clinical course of the illness was IL2. CONCLUSIONS: ECP is a tolerable treatment and free of the side effects that may occur with conventional chemotherapy, therefore it should be used more frequently, especially in MF, where it is frequent that patients have to undergo multiple treatment lines for indolent trend that characterizes it.