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Bevacizumab may decrease quality of life in women with ovarian cancer
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Women with ovarian cancer who received bevacizumab and standard chemotherapy experienced a slight decrease in quality of life compared with women on the standard regimen alone, according to study results.
The current findings were from a quality-of-life (QOL) analysis in a high-risk cohort of women with ovarian cancer. The data were culled from the Gynecologic Cancer Intergroup International Collaboration on Ovarian Neoplasms 7 (ICON7) trial, in which bevacizumab (Avastin, Genentech) was linked to improvements in PFS among women with ovarian cancer. In ICON7, the drug was administered as first-line and single-drug continuation therapy.
Patients eligible for the randomized, multicenter, open-label phase 3 trial had International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) high-risk stage I to IV epithelial ovarian cancer and had undergone surgery.
Patients were assigned six cycles of standard chemotherapy for 18 weeks with carboplatin (area under the curve 5 or 6) and paclitaxel (175 mg/m2) alone or with bevacizumab (7.5 mg/kg) administered intravenously with chemotherapy and continued in a single agent, for a treatment duration of 54 weeks.
The EORTC quality-of-life questionnaire was used to evaluate for the primary endpoint at week 54.
There were 764 women in the standard therapy group and 764 in the bevacizumab group.
Baseline QOL data were available for 684 women in the standard arm and 691 women in the study drug arm. Week 54 QOL data were available for 388 women in the standard group and 502 women in the study group.
Eighteen-week results showed an overall improvement in QOL of 7.2 points (standard deviation [SD]=24.4) during therapy.
Week 54 results indicated a QOL score of 76.1 points (SD=18.2) in the standard arm and 69.7 points (SD=19.1) in the bevacizumab group (difference, 6.4 points; 95% CI, 3.7-9.0).
“Bevacizumab continuation treatment seems to be associated with a small but clinically significant decrement in QOL compared with standard treatment for women with ovarian cancer,” the researchers concluded. “The trade-off between the prolongation of progression-free survival and the quality of that period of time needs to be considered in clinical practice when making treatment decisions.”
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