Erythropoietin enhances tumor control and survival in pelvic malignancy

מתןך medicontext.co.il

LISBON, Portugal (Reuters Health) – Tumor control and overall survival are appreciably enhanced if women receive subcutaneous treatment with erythropoietin during radiotherapy for pelvic malignancies. Findings from this phase III randomized trial were presented here this week at the European Cancer Conference.

Dr. D. Antonadou of Metaxas Cancer Hospital in Piraeus, Greece and colleagues randomized 190 patients with a variety of pelvic malignancies to treatment with 10,000 U erythropoietin, five times a week, until hemoglobin levels reached at least 13 g/dL. Subcutaneous erythropoietin was continued three times a week until radiation was completed. Another 195 patients underwent the same radiation protocol but did not receive erythropoietin. Both groups also received 80 mg of ferrous sulfate supplementation.

At baseline, the mean hemoglobin level in the erythropoietin group was 9.8 g/dL and 10.1 g/dL for controls. During radiation therapy, mean hemoglobin levels reached 12.09 g/dL in the erythropoietin arm, compared with 10.6 g/dL for controls. Patients taking erythropoietin achieved mean weekly increases in hemoglobin of 0.54 g/dL compared with mean weekly increases of 0.17 g/dL for controls.

At the end of 2 years, local control for patients in the erythropoietin group ranged from 81% to 95%, depending on the cancer site originally irradiated. The rate of local control among patients who did not receive erythropoietin during radiation therapy ranged from 70% to 82%.

At 4 years, local or distant recurrences, again depending on the original tumor site, ranged from 6% to 34% in patients who received erythropoietin. In contrast, malignancy had recurred either locally or as metastatic disease in between 27% to 44% of patients who did not receive erythropoietin during their original radiation therapy.

"Erythropoietin was well tolerated and there were no adverse events [from treatment] in this patient population," investigators note, and the findings "suggest that treatment significantly improves local tumor control in patients with pelvic malignancies undergoing radiation therapy."

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