A third round of radiation when DIPG comes back again
Original title: Beyond Reirradiation: Third-Course Radiation Therapy in Recurrent Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma-Case Series and Literature Review.
How far along is this research?
- Lab cells
- Animals
- Review
- Tested in people
This was tested in people. That is the most reliable kind of research we share.
Radiation is already used in care, but a third round has been tried in only a few people.
The short version
Three people with DIPG had a third round of radiation, and their scans held steady.
What was studied. Doctors gave a third course of radiation to 3 people whose DIPG had come back a second time. They also looked back at past reports of people who had 3 courses of radiation. They found 21 rare cases and studied the 13 with enough records.
What they found. In all 3 patients, scans showed the tumor stopped growing. One patient had some improvement in nerve problems. No lasting severe harm came from the third round, but 2 patients had short lived trouble with alertness, brain swelling, or breathing. In the past cases, the tumor shrank in 69.2%, and symptoms got better or stayed the same in 93.7%. People lived from 2 to 13 months after the third round.
What this means, and what it doesn't
What it could mean: If DIPG has come back a second time, a third round of radiation may be worth asking your doctor about. It may help hold the tumor steady and ease some symptoms for a time. Each person's risks have to be weighed carefully.
What it doesn't mean: This is not a cure, and it does not stop DIPG. It is a report on 3 patients plus a look back at 13 past cases, which is a very small number. It was not a trial, so we cannot be sure how much the radiation itself helped. The authors say larger studies are needed, above all to learn how safe it is. Radiation is already part of care, but a third round is not standard.
Source: PubMed, October 15, 2026 · Read the original
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