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FOLFOX was not associated with increased rates of steatohepatitis
Digestive Disease Week 2009
Results from a retrospective analysis of U.S. patients with metastatic colorectal cancer showed that those assigned to neoadjuvant FOLFOX were no more likely to develop steatohepatitis in the liver than patients assigned to 5-FU and leucovorin. However, the results suggested patients assigned to FOLFOX had more complications and poorer survival.
Kaye Reid Lombardo, MD, an assistant professor of surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., presented the results of the study during Digestive Disease Week 2009.
“We had three aims with this study: determine the frequency of chemo-associated steatohepatitis after neoadjuvant FOLFOX, determine if the steatohepatitis increased operative morbidity and overall mortality and determine the long-term effects of CASH on survival,” Lombardo said during her presentation.
Researchers assigned 39 patients to FOLFOX (group one) and 134 patients to 5-FU and leucovorin (group two). A third group (n=51) had operative resections without chemotherapy for benign diseases.
After a median follow-up of 2.4 years, the rate of chemotherapy-associated steatohepatitis in group one was 9% compared with 11% for group two and 6% for group three (P=.89).
The researchers said patients in the two chemotherapy groups had greater blood loss and operative duration than patients in group three, but there was no difference in blood loss and operative duration between groups one and two.
Patients in group one were more likely to have grade-4 and higher complications compared with group two, though there was no difference in 30- or 60-day mortality. One-year rates of survival were nearly equal between the two groups, but five-year survival for patients assigned to FOLFOX was 26.3% compared with 43.7% in group two. – by Jason Harris
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