Overall survival for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients is prolonged approximately 5 months as a result of treatment with beta blockers, a type of generic heart medication, according to a new first-of-its-kind study from University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center investigators. Dr. Snood continues, “Our research has shown that the same stress mechanisms impact ovarian cancer progression, so these drugs could play a new role in cancer treatment”. Researchers compared overall survival among patients with documented beta-blocker use during chemotherapy and those without. Among those who took beta blockers, the median survival time was 94.9 months for those receiving nonselective beta blockers versus 38 months for those receiving ADRB1 selective agents.
Advertisement
The researchers note, however, that further studies are required before beta-blockers are recommended as adjuvant therapy in patients with ovarian cancer undergoing surgery. Of these patients, 193 were taking beta-1 adrenergic receptor (ADRB1) selective agents beta blockers and 76 were receiving nonselective beta antagonists beta blockers.
Beta blockers are used to tamp down the body’s response to stress, which often leads to the heart pumping harder and faster.
“The stratification of patients by beta-blocker use and selectivity in this study makes it unique among all other studies examining the impact of these drugs on cancer”, Sood said.
Beta blockers can also improve blood flow by helping blood vessels open up.
Taking beta blockers could extend the lives of women with ovarian cancer by up to four years, scientists reveal today. This was not true for patients who took SBBs.
In an accompanying editorial, Kristen Bunch, of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and Dr. Christina Annunciate, of the National Cancer Institute, point out that beta blockers can cause significant side effects in some patients, which could prevent their widespread use in patients with ovarian cancer. An estimated 21,290 new U.S. cases are diagnosed, and some 14,180 women die from the disease each year, according to the American Cancer Society. “To our information, the present research is the primary to look at the relationships with affected person outcomes based mostly on particular varieties of beta blockers”. “It also builds on the mounting evidence that beta-blockers may become a key treatment component for many patients in the future”.
The researchers write that, at current, two medical trials are underway investigating the mixture of and variable doses of propranolol on most cancers biology alongside the impression that nonselective beta blockers have on stress modulators in sufferers with newly recognized ovarian most cancers.
Advertisement
The study was retrospective, and thus wasn’t randomized, and had other important limitations, researchers said.
