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VIEW ALL NEWSAvastin plus chemo helps when brain cancer recurs
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Research suggests that adding Avastin (also known as bevacizumab) to standard chemotherapy regimens helps improve outcome for patients with recurrent glioblastoma, a particularly deadly and difficult-to-treat type of brain tumor.
"We found that on direct comparison to a control group, bevacizumab in addition to chemotherapy is better than chemotherapy alone," lead investigator Dr. Phioanh L. Nghiemphu told Reuters Health.
"Also," she pointed out, "adding bevacizumab significantly improved survival in patients older than 55 years who, as a group, tend to do worse on treatments for glioblastoma."
Nghiemphu and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles reviewed data on 44 patients who received bevacizumab and 79 patients who did not.
Those in the combination group survived significantly longer free of signs of disease progression (4.25 months versus 1.82 months). Median overall survival was also significantly longer with bevacizumab (9.01 versus 6.11 months).
At 6 months, "progression-free" survival was 41 percent in patients who received bevacizumab and 18 percent in those who did not.
In analyses taking into account multiple factors, only treatment with bevacizumab had a significant positive impact on survival, the researchers report in the medical journal Neurology.
As mentioned, the researchers found that bevacizumab was particularly helpful in patients older than 55 years. Given these results, they conclude that "elderly patients, such as patients older than 70 years, should be studied with bevacizumab."
"These patients," they note, "are often excluded from clinical trials."
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