Intermittent docetaxel chemotherapy in patients with castrate-resistant prostate cancer - Abstract

Department of Clinical Therapeutics, University of Athens Medical School, Athens, Greece.

To determine whether intermittent docetaxel might control disease while limiting the toxicity and improving the quality-of-life parameters in patients with advanced, castrate-resistant prostate cancer. Intermittent docetaxel represents an appealing therapeutic approach.

We reviewed the records of 35 patients with chemotherapy-naive castrate-resistant prostate cancer who had received docetaxel 45 mg/m(2) every 2 weeks, with oral prednisone 5 mg twice daily. Treatment was held when the patients had reached a >50% prostate-specific antigen reduction from baseline that was confirmed by a second measurement 4 weeks later, in the absence of disease progression. Docetaxel was resumed at a >25% prostate-specific antigen increase from the nadir level, also confirmed by a second measurement 4 weeks later, or in cases of documented disease progression.

Of the 35 patients, 18 (51.42%) had entered the first chemotherapy-free interval (CFI) after a median of 6 infusions (range 2-12), 6 patients had entered a second CFI after a median of 4 months (range 2-12), and 1 patient, a third CFI at the last follow-up point. The median interval "off chemotherapy" was 4.5 months (range 1-16) for the first CFI. Two patients discontinued docetaxel because of Grade 4 nonhematologic toxicity. The median interval to treatment failure was 8.1 months (95% confidence interval 5.1-12.2) for the entire cohort and 12.2 months (95% confidence interval 8.3-25+) for the patients who had entered the first CFI.

The results of our study have shown that intermittent docetaxel is a clinically active and likely more tolerable and less costly therapeutic strategy for patients with castrate-resistant prostate cancer than continuous administration. Additional validation of this approach is warranted.

Written by:
Mountzios I, Bournakis E, Efstathiou E, Varkaris A, Wen S, Chrisofos M, Deliveliotis C, Alamanis C, Anastasiou I, Constantinides C, Karadimou A, Tsiatas M, Papadimitriou C, Bamias A, Dimopoulos MA.   Are you the author?

Reference: Urology. 2011 Jan 20. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1016/j.urology.2010.08.044

PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21256546

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