For the first time, researchers say they have demonstrated a benefit in overall survival among epithelial ovarian cancer patients receiving beta-blockers.
Advertisement
The study analysed data from 1,425 women with the tough-to-treat cancer and found that median survival in patients taking beta blockers was 47.8 months – five months longer than the 42 months median for those not using the treatment.
They found that those who were not taking any beta blocker medication survived for an average of three years and six months.
A common medication used to treat heart disease can also prolong survival in ovarian cancer patients, researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found.
Experts last night welcomed the “dramatic” results but warned that beta blockers can have side effects including diarrhoea, nausea and insomnia.
“We discovered that sufferers taking a broad, or nonselective, beta blocker have been those who derived probably the most profit in contrast with those that weren’t taking a beta blocker or those that have been taking a beta-1-selective medicine”, stories lead writer Dr. Anil Sood, of the College of Texas MD Anderson Most cancers Middle.
Beta blockers work by stopping the release of stress hormones from receptors in the body.
New analysis means that beta blockers – a type of medicine sometimes used to scale back blood hypertension – might even have anticancer properties that warrant additional investigation.
Among the 269 patients who received beta-blockers, 193 (71.7%) received beta-1-adrenergic receptor selective agents (SBBs) and the remaining patients received non-selective beta antagonists (NSBBs).
Further examination showed that NSBB users had improved overall survival regardless of the presence of such prognostic factors or comorbidities.
In recent years, studies have shown that chronic stress promotes the growth and spread of ovarian and other cancers.
The study was published online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. Overall, a woman’s risk of getting ovarian cancer during her lifetime is about one in 75, yet it is a particularly deadly disease. “It also builds on the mounting evidence that beta-blockers may become a key treatment component for many patients in the future”, said Sood. “To our knowledge, the current study is the first to examine the relationships with patient outcomes based on specific types of beta blockers”.
The study was retrospective, and thus wasn’t randomized, and had other important limitations, researchers said.
Advertisement
Portions of this study were supported by National Institutes of Health grants (CA140933, CA104825, CA109298, P50CA083639, U54CA151688, U54CA96300, U54CA96297, and CA016672), an Ovarian Cancer Research Fund program Project Development Grant, the Department of Defense (grants OC073399, W81XWJ-10-0158, and OC100237), the Betty Ann Asche Murray Distinguished Professorship, the RGK Foundation, the Gilder Foundation, the Blanton-Davis Ovarian Cancer Research Program, and a Gynecologic Cancer Foundation-St.
