FRIDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) -- For patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma, which is nearly always fatal and for which few treatment options exist, the addition of chemotherapy to active symptom control does not improve survival or quality of life, according to study findings published in the May 17 issue of The Lancet.
Martin F. Muers, from the Leeds General Infirmary in Leeds, United Kingdom, and colleagues randomly assigned 409 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma to one of three groups: active symptom control alone (which could encompass a variety of treatments); active symptom control plus mitomycin, vinblastine and cisplatin; or active symptom control plus vinorelbine. For overall survival, both chemotherapy groups were combined and compared with active symptom control alone due to slow patient accrual.
The researchers found that 96 percent of patients died, with similar percentages in all three groups. The addition of chemotherapy modestly but non-significantly increased survival (8.5 months versus 7.6 months), although a preliminary analysis suggested that the addition of vinorelbine significantly increased survival to 9.5 months. There were no differences in four quality-of-life measures between the three groups, the report notes.
"The results of our trial suggest that vinorelbine might be effective, but non-inferiority trials (which typically include many more patients than the largest superiority trials reported so far) would be virtually impossible to undertake in this disease," Muers and colleagues conclude.
Three of the study authors disclosed ties to Pierre Fabre Oncology.
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