Adding Bevacizumab May Help Newly Diagnosed Advanced Lung Cancer

By David Douglas
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Mar 17 - Adding
bevacizumab to chemotherapy might help treatment-na�ve patients with
locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, Brazilian
researchers found in a systematic review.
Bevacizumab delays disease progression and
probably improves survival as well, said researcher Dr. Otavio Clarke in
an email to Reuters Health.
"This effect in survival is yet to be confirmed,"
he said, adding that he's waiting to incorporate the results of other
trials in a future meta-analysis.
Dr. Clark of Evidencias Consulting, Sao Paulo, and
colleagues compared the effects of bevacizumab plus chemotherapy or
chemotherapy alone by pooling data from four randomized trials involving
2,200 patients.
The response rates were higher in the bevacizumab
groups (relative risk 0.53 to 0.58, in an inverse variance method with
numbers above 1 favoring the standard arm). Progression-free survival
was also better with bevacizumab (hazard ratio, 0.72 to 0.78).
Alternative analytical methods also gave results
in favor of the combination therapy, the authors reported in a March 5th
online paper in Lung Cancer.
Overall survival was longer with a 15 mg/kg dose of
bevacizumab than with a 7.5 mg/kg dose (hazard ratio, 0.89).
However, the bevacizumab patients experienced more
hematologic toxicities beyond grade 3, neutropenia and febrile
neutropenia.
Overall, concluded Dr. Clark, "Bevacizumab has a
very high cost and is linked to more side effects. So, it takes us to
the point that physicians should weigh very carefully the risks, costs
and potential benefits."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/gql4S8
Lung Cancer 2011.

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