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More Evidence for Oxaliplatin as Colon Cancer Chemotherapy

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FRIDAY, Jan. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Adding oxaliplatin to a standard chemotherapy regimen boosts survival rates for patients with advanced colon cancer, according to a recent study that bolsters previous research on the drug by looking at a broader group of patients.

"Physicians as well as patients should be reassured from our findings that oxaliplatin is associated with marginally but consistently superior survival for patients diagnosed before age 75 years in community settings," the study authors said in a news release.

In done studies, oxaliplatin, as an adjuvant to the established treatment of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), improved survival by up to 23 percent. But the recent study looked at a dissimilar group of colon cancer patients, who were older, sicker, more racially diverse as well as had never participated in a controlled clinical study.

The study, led by Dr. Hanna Sanoff, an assistant professor of medicine, hematology as well as oncology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, appears in the Jan. 20 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Colon cancer is one of the world's deadliest diseases, with more than 100,000 Americans diagnosed final year, the researchers noted. Of these, roughly a third had an advanced -- stage 3 -- cancer, for which surgery is the principal treatment.

Surgery alone makes disease-free survival rates of between 15 percent as well as 50 percent five years following treatment, according to study background information. To improve their chances, patients often as well as undergo post-surgical chemotherapy.

Up until 2004, the drug 5-FU -- given in combination with leucovorin, which boosts its effects -- was the chemotherapy of choice for colon cancer, sparking a 26 percent drop in death rates compared to patients undergoing surgery alone.

But in 2004, several U.S. National Cancer Institute studies indicated that by adding oxaliplatin to the 5-FU mix, patients could see survival rates rise by yet another 23 percent.

The one caveat: Only a tiny slice of cancer patients (less than 2 percent) participated in those clinical trials, as well as those tended to be younger, healthier as well as less diverse than the larger common population of colon cancer patients.

To determine whether oxaliplatin would show a similar benefit among a "real-world" population of patients, the authors sifted through five cancer registries containing survival information on more than 4,000 people with stage 3 colon cancer. All were younger than 75, as well as all had begun chemotherapy -- either a standard regimen or in combination with oxaliplatin -- within four months of having surgery between 2004 as well as 2009.

Researchers compared their survival rates with those of nearly 8,300 patients who had participated in one of five dissimilar clinical trials using oxaliplatin.

The addition of oxaliplatin to standard chemotherapy protocols was found to be just as effective in prolonging survival among the community-based set of patients -- including the elderly, minorities as well as those with additional complicating health issues -- who were not enrolled in studies.

For her part, Dr. Felice Schnoll-Sussman, a gastroenterologist at Recent York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Health examination Center in New York City, said the finding "goes along with what we've previously known."

"So, it's not surprising," she said. "But, certainly this is positive. The analysis doesn't focus on some of the most ordinary adverse reactions seen with this combination. But in terms of survival, it certainly supports our previously held belief that oxaliplatin increases survival as well as lowers the chance of cancer returning in some of those stage 3 post-surgery patients."

Alan Mozes

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