Fred Thompson, GOP Potential Candidate, Had Rare NHL

WASHINGTON, April 11 -- Fred Thompson, the actor and former Republican senator from Tennessee, revealed today that he is in remission from a rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

After feeling a lump under his jaw, Thompson was diagnosed in November 2004 with nodal marginal zone lymphoma, an indolent B-cell lymphoma, according to his oncologist, Bruce D. Cheson, M.D., chief of hematology at George Washington University Hospital.

Thompson, 64, who portrays a New York district attorney on the Law and Order TV series, said he made his medical condition public because he is thinking of running for the GOP presidential nomination.

Thompson was treated with radiation and rituximab (Rituxan). Since then, Dr. Cheson said, non-invasive scans have found no evidence of disease in Thompson, and he is asymptomatic.

Nodal marginal zone lymphomas account for only 1% to 3% of all NHLs. 'Some lymphomas are very aggressive, but people with slow-growing types, like Senator Thompson's, more often die from natural causes associated with old age, rather than from the disease,'' Dr, Cheson said.

He said that if Thomson wants to run for the GOP nomination, there is no medical reason he could not, and Thompson would be medically fit to serve as president. Dr. Cheson that there would probably be a recurrence eventually, followed by retreatment with rituximab.