Chemo Combination Improves Meso Survival Rate

February 9, 2007 - A recently completed large multi-center study demonstrates that patients with mesothelioma have a higher survival rate when treated with a combination of two cancer drugs.

According to an article in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research, people treated with both pemetrexed and cisplatin, along with the vitamin supplements folic acid and B12, survived an average of nearly 3 months longer than those patients treated with just cisplatin alone. 

A press release notes that the researchers, led by Dr. John Green at the Clatterbridge Center for Oncology in England, reviewed a study of 448 patients with advanced mesothelioma who were treated with either the single drug or the combination.

"Pemetrexed used in combination with cisplatin significantly increases the length of survival, when compared with cisplatin alone," the researchers say. "Further research is needed into the optimum treatment regimen for pleural mesothelioma."

Data was gathered from 20 treatment centers in Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. Eighty-one percent of the patients were men, with an average age of 61.  The patients agreed that their quality of life had also improved as a result of the drug combination, thanks to a reduction in pain, coughing, fatigue, and other common symptoms of malignant pleural mesothelioma.

“It is a personal matter as to whether the survival increase for patients receiving the two drugs is worthwhile,” said Dr. Daniel Baram, M.D., a pulmonologist at the Lung Cancer Evaluation Center at the State University of New York. "It depends in large part on the patient. A 2.8-month mean survival increase means that some patients may get even more than that, though some people will get less. Many, if not most, patients when faced with a disease with a very bad prognosis are often willing to undergo aggressive therapy, although the toxicity is serious and potentially life-threatening."