Concomitant use of angiotensin system inhibitors may significantly improve overall survival and progression-free survival in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) receiving sunitinib, a study published in the journal Annals of Oncology has shown.

For the study, researchers retrospectively analyzed data from all patients with mRCC who received sunitinib as first-line treatment at a single cancer institute in France between 2004 and 2013.

Researchers identified 213 patients with a median follow-up of 3.6 years. Of those, 134 were hypertensive and 105 used angiotension system inhibitors.

Results showed that hypertensive patients had a longer median overall survival (41.6 vs 16.4 months; P < 0.0001) and a longer median progression-free survival (12.9 vs 5.6 months; P < 0.0001) compared with non-hypertensive patients.

In addition, multivariate analysis showed that those who took angiotensin system inhibitors had significantly better overall survival (HR = 0.40; 95% CI: 0.24-0.66; P < 0.001) and progression-free survival (HR = 0.55; 95% CI: 0.35-0.86;P = 0.009) compared with non-users.

Researchers found no difference on outcome between patients who started taking angiotensin system inhibitors before initiating sunitinib and those started during sunitinib treatment.

Reference

1. Izzedine H, Derosa L, Le Teuff G, et al. Hypertension and angiotensin system inhibitors: impact on outcome in sunitinib treated patients for metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Ann Oncol. 2015. [Epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdv147.

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