While chemotherapy significantly improves the prognosis of breast cancer patients, it also damages otherwise healthy organs, such as the ovaries. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists may have a protective effect against chemotherapy-induced ovarian toxicity in premenopausal women being treated for breast cancer; however, studies of its clinical efficacy have reported conflicting results.

Doxorubicin-eluting bead TACE (DEB-TACE) has recently been developed as a novel therapy option for HCC. However, the clinical efficacy of DEB-TACE is still unclear. Herein, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of DEB-TACE compared with conventional TACE (cTACE).

The multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor sunitinib is used in various cancers. Clinical studies have reported a substantial variation in the incidence of hypothyroidism associated with sunitinib, without a systemic attempt to synthesize these data.

Landmark studies have established trastuzumab in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aims to synthesize all available data, so as to evaluate the safety of trastuzumab during pregnancy. This study was performed in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. All studies that examined the safety of trastuzumab administered during pregnancy, regardless of sample size, were considered eligible. Overall, 17 studies (18 pregnancies; 19 newborns) were included. In 55.6 % of cases, trastuzumab was administered in the metastatic setting. The mean duration of trastuzumab administration was 14.8 weeks. Occurrence of oligohydramnios/anhydramnios (O/A) was the most common (61.1 %) adverse event. 73.3 % of pregnancies exposed to trastuzumab during the second/third trimester were complicated with O/A; the respective rate of pregnancies exposed to trastuzumab exclusively during the first trimester was 0 % (P = 0.043). The mean GA at delivery was 33.8 weeks, and the mean weight of babies at delivery was 2,261 gr. In 52.6 % of cases, a healthy neonate was born. At the long-term evaluation, all children without problems at birth were healthy with a median follow-up of 9 months, while four out of nine children facing troubles at birth were dead within an interval ranging between birth and 5.25 months. All children exposed to trastuzumab in utero exclusively in the first trimester were completely healthy at birth. Trastuzumab should not be administered during pregnancy. However, for women who become accidentally pregnant during trastuzumab administration and wish to continue pregnancy, trastuzumab should be stopped and pregnancy could be allowed to continue.

Everolimus is a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor approved for treatment of renal cell carcinoma, subependymal giant cell astrocytoma, breast cancer, and progressive neuroendocrine tumors of pancreatic origin. Its use may be hindered because of adverse events, including rash. The reported incidence and risk of a rash to everolimus varies widely and has not been closely investigated. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature to determine the incidence and risk of developing a rash.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cognitive effects of chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer worldwide. Several preclinical and observational studies have shown that bisphosphonates may have chemopreventive effects against CRC. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of all studies evaluating the effect of bisphosphonates on the risk of CRC.

The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess whether chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment is consistently observed in cancer patients and to identify the areas of cognition affected.

Docetaxel and paclitaxel show significant clinical activity in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and have been approved for MBC by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but it is still unclear whether a paclitaxel-based regimen improves outcomes over a docetaxel-based regimen in patients with MBC. We therefore performed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to compare the safety and efficacy of these two regimens in MBC.

Hematopoietic growth factors are often given for prevention of febrile neutropenia (FN), infections, and other complications by hastening neutrophil recovery in the treatment of malignancies after high dose chemotherapy (HDCT). Although several meta-analyses have already demonstrated beneficial effects of prophylactic granulocyte colony-stimulating factors (G-CSF) administration, the effects of G-CSF have not been confirmed in cancer patients receiving stem cell transplantation (SCT) after HDCT. Therefore, we performed a statistical combination of controlled clinical trials to investigate the efficacy of prophylactic use of G-CSF in preventing the neutropenic complications associated with SCT following HDCT in cancer patients. We searched PubMed to identify potentially relevant references and finally selected seven randomized controlled trials that met all of the eligibility criteria. Our meta-analysis demonstrated that prophylactic G-CSF reduced the risk of documented infections and time to hematologic recovery manifested by days to absolute neutrophil count (ANC) ≥ 0.5 × 10(9)/L, days to ANC ≥ 1.0 × 10(9)/L, and days to platelets ≥ 20 × 10(9)/L in SCT patients with cancer following HDCT. The G-CSF treated group also showed a decrease in the length of hospital stay. However, there was no difference between G-CSF treatment group and placebo group in regard to all-cause mortality, infection-related mortality, grade 2∼4 acute graft-versus-host-disease, and episode of fever.

To gain a better understanding of the overall incidence and risk of hypertension in cancer patients who receive pazopanib and to compare the differences in incidence among sorafenib, sunitinib, and pazopanib.

To date, the primary objective of phase I trials has been to safely select the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of a drug or drug combination for utilization in subsequent trials. Although conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy is generally more effective at the MTD than molecularly targeted agents (MTAs), recent single-institution data suggest that molecularly targeted agent may not require an MTD for efficacy. We analyzed patient outcome results in MTA phase I trials at multiple institutions throughout North America sponsored by the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program.

To investigate the efficacy and safety of intraperitoneal chemotherapy (IPC) for patients with gastric cancer and to compare effects between different regimens of IPC.

To evaluate the adverse effect and survival outcome of weekly and triweekly cisplatin with radiotherapy in treatment of cervical cancer.

Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) accounts for 25% of all leukaemias and is the most common lymphoid malignancy in western countries. Standard treatments include mono- or polychemotherapies, usually combined with monoclonal antibodies such as rituximab or alemtuzumab. However, the impact of these agents remains unclear, as there are hints for increased risk of severe infections.

To evaluate progression-free survival (PFS) as a potential surrogate endpoint (SEP) for overall survival (OS) in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) with a focus on applicability to trials containing targeted therapy with anti-VEGF- or anti-EGF receptor (EGFR)-directed monoclonal antibodies.

The efficacy and adverse effects of capecitabine-based chemotherapy versus other regimens reported in previous trials were discordant. The aim of the present study was to determine the efficacy and toxicity profiles of capecitabine-based chemotherapy versus capecitabine-free regimens in patients with metastatic and/or advanced breast cancer.

To investigate the efficacy and safety of standard-dose versus high-dose imatinib.

Although existing evidence from clinical trials has demonstrated manifestation of hepatic adverse events (AEs) with the use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), overall risks have yet to be reported. Thus we conducted a meta-analysis to determine the risk of hepatotoxicity associated with the use of TKIs, by comparing the occurrence of hepatotoxicity of the TKI arms against that of comparison arms.

Cisplatin has been associated with an increased risk of arterial thromboembolic events (ATEs). However, because this association is mostly based on case reports and retrospective studies, we conducted a systemic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials evaluating the incidence and risk of ATEs associated with cisplatin. Eligible studies included prospective randomized phase II and III trials evaluating cisplatin-based vs non-cisplatin-based chemotherapy in patients with solid tumors, which were identified from PubMed articles published between 1990 and 2010. Incidence rates, relative risks (RRs), and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using a random effects model. A total of 8216 patients from 38 trials were included. Among patients treated with cisplatin-based chemotherapy, the summary incidence of ATEs was 0.67% (95% CI = 0.40% to 0.95%), and the RR of ATEs was 1.36 (95% CI = 0.86 to 2.17; P = .19). No increase in ATEs was detected in any prespecified subgroup.