Adding veliparib to chemotherapy, for 6 treatment cycles, followed by veliparib maintenance did not significantly impact health-related quality of life (QoL) compared to chemotherapy alone in patients with stage III or IV ovarian cancer, according to a study presented at the 2020 Virtual European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress.
In this phase 3 study, David Cella, PhD, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, and colleagues investigated the effect of veliparib plus chemotherapy followed by veliparib maintenance on healt-related QoL for patients with ovarian cancer.
NCCN Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Ovarian Symptom Index-18 (NFOSI-18) and the EuroQoL-5D-5L were used to measure health-related QoL in a total of 1069 patients. Health-related QoL assessment took place at the time of screening, on the first day of the first cycle, and at every other cycle thereafter until treatment was discontinued.
The veliparib throughout cohort (n= 351) of the study received 150 mg of oral veliparib plus carboplatin/paclitaxel for 6 cycles, after which they received a veliparib maintenance doses of 300/400 mg. Placebo only was given to another cohort (n = 363) and a third group (n = 355) received carboplatin/paclitaxel only with placebo, followed by placebo maintenance.
Both primary study arms showed improvement in health-related QoL from baseline and median time to symptom worsening was also similar. The veliparib-throughout arm yielded non-statistically significant improvements compared to carboplatin/paclitaxel-only treatment in most domains. The exception was the NFOSI-18 Treatment Side Effects, for which both arms showed negative mean changes in the initial seven cycles and improvement in later cycles.—Jennifer Spector
Cella D, Bookman M, Dahl Steffensen K, et al. Health-related quality of life (HRQol) in patients (pts) with newly diagnosed stage III or IV ovarian cancer treated with veliparib (vel) + chemotherapy followed by vel maintenance (maint). Presented at: 2020 Virtual ESMO Congress. September 18, 2020. Abstract 809MO.
