One barrier to enrolling minorities in research involves resources. For some studies, such as pediatric oncology clinical trials, there might not be enough resources to enroll one or two patients at a single site.
Many oncologists may cite fear of giving up hope as a primary reason they defer conversations about end-of-life or advance care planning until late in the course of a patient’s disease.
An analysis revealed palliative care discussions do not happen until late in the illness trajectory. Further, the review revealed actual palliative care does not begin until close to time of death.
Recently, melatonin and its potential benefits in cancer and chemotherapy have been discussed in varying publications. However, it is unclear how many individuals may be using it to promote sleep or for other health reasons such as an adjunctive therapy in cancer treatment.
In a trial comparing chemotherapy alone to chemotherapy plus bevacizumab in the treatment of patients with platinium-resistant ovarian cancer, the combination resulted in improved response rates and progression-free survival (PFS) and without a high rate of added toxicity. Whether bevacizumab alone would provide comparable improvements was not assessed but remains an important question for future trials.
Breast cancer survivors participating in a 12-week yoga program reported decreased fatigue, increased vitality, and improved sleep on multiple scoring systems, but no impact on depressive symptoms. Increased time spent doing yoga led to greater improvements in inflammation, mood, and fatigue.
In an international, randomized, non-inferiority trial, bendamustine-rituximab proved comparable in overall response rate when compared with R-CHOP or R-CVP in the management of indolent NHL and mantle cell lymphoma. Progression free and overall survival comparisons remain to be determined. Notably, toxicity profiles were significantly different, with higher rates of reported nausea and vomiting with BR and neuropathy and alopecia with R-CHOP/R-CVP.
In this pooled analysis of more than 7700 ovarian cancer patients and nearly 12,000 controls, low dose aspirin and high dose non-aspirin NSAID use was associated with a risk reduction for invasive epithelial ovarian cancer of 20 to 34% relative to non-users.
Synopsis: In this study, the authors evaluated and refined previously published risk stratification for locoregional failure (LF) by applying it to a multicenter patient cohort.
After a median follow-up of 5 years, the aromatase inhibitor, anastrozole decreased the incidence of breast cancer in high-risk postmenopausal women by 53% compared to women receiving a placebo.