The objective of this study was to follow urinary neopterin in a patient affected by non-Hodgkin's lymphoma during the three months treatment from the onset of the disease. In the study a patient affected by non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Stage IV (centrocyto-centroblastic type) was enrolled. He was treated with combined chemotherapy and local radiotherapy. Neopterin was measured by high performance liquid chromatography in the first morning urine specimens. The time course of urinary neopterin levels ranged from 110 to 524 micromol x mol(-1) creatinine (mean 261, SD 67.5 micromol x mol(-1) creatinine). Over 70 % of the received values were higher than the upper limit of normal excretion of healthy subjects. Longitudinal analysis showed a relatively big variance of urinary neopterin with a tendency of decrease during the treatment. The significant decrease of urinary neopterin was observed till after the radiotherapy period which followed the chemotherapy period. In conclusions, the response to the therapy was accompanied by a reversal tendency of neopterin excretion to physiological values. This study confirms neopterin as a suitable additional parameter for the control of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma therapy.

Dept of Biochemistry Faculty of Medicine Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic