Prevention of neutropenia during chemotherapy by prolonged myelostimulatory preparations

Abstract

Neutropenia and associated infection, resulting in hospitalization and use of antibiotics, has a negative effect on chemotherapy. The need to reduce the dose of cytotoxic drugs during neutropenia leads to lower survival rates in patients with hematological malignancies and solid tumors. Since 1990s myelocytokines – proteins that accelerate neutrophil recovery after cytostatic chemotherapy and reduce the risk of infection – is widely used in the clinical practice. The use of these drugs can support the planned dose intensity of chemotherapy and improves the treatment efficacy. The disadvantages of these drugs include the need for their daily parenteral administration for 7–10 days. The development of long-acting forms (pegfilgrastim and lipegfilgrastim) has solved this problem. Self-regulating clearance of prolonged forms allowed to use them only once on a chemotherapy course. Results of pegfilgrastim administration in 25 patients with hematological malignancies (8 patients) and solid tumors (17 patients) included in our analysis. Prolonged preparation showed high efficacy in secondary prophylaxis of neutropenia and infection decreasing the risk by 82 %. The single administration of pegfilgrastim allowed safe dose intensity chemotherapy with shorter intervals between courses (AC-14) in 8 patients with breast cancer. Tolerability was good; cases of hyperleukocytosis have notbeen reported. Recently in Europe and the Russian Federation a new drug from prolonged myelocytokine group – lipegfilgrastim – has been registered. The results of two controlled trials in patients with breast cancer (n = 410) receiving doxorubicin/docetaxel showed high efficacy of the drug as the pegfilgrastim with comparable tolerability.

Keywords

• chemotherapy
• dose intensity
• toxicity
• neutropenia
• granulocyte colony stimulating factor
• pegfilgrastim
• lipegfilgrastim
• Lonkvex