Combining the cancer drug with standard chemotherapy in treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer helped to lengthen the time before the disease got worse, results of a study by Roche's unit Genentech showed.
The study was carried out on 361 women with ovarian cancer whose disease had worsened due to resistance to platinum-containing chemotherapy. The risk of progression was reduced by 52 percent in women who received Avastin plus chemotherapy compared with those who received chemotherapy alone, the company said on Saturday.
Women who received Avastin plus chemotherapy had a progression-free survival or PFS of 6.7 months compared to 3.4 months in women who received chemotherapy alone. They also had a significantly higher rate of tumor shrinkage compared to the chemotherapy alone group.
Select adverse events such as high blood pressure and an excess of protein in the urine occurred more often in the Avastin arm compared to the chemotherapy alone arm. Gastrointestinal perforations, where a hole in the stomach or intestine, and fistulas were also slightly higher in the Avastin group.
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