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news.The Cochrane Collaboration, an organization that evaluates medical research, has discovered that stretching out a dose of chemotherapy over six or more hours may reduce the risk of heart problems caused by commonly used cancer drugs.
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Anthracycline drugs like daunorubicin and doxorubicin are used to treat many types of solid tumors and blood cancers such as leukemias.
Anthracycline therapy can be very successful at controlling cancer, but heart damage caused by anthracycline treatment “is a considerable and serious problem,” said Dr Elvira van Dalen of the Emma Children's Hospital in the Netherlands.
In five studies involving 557 patients, the longer treatment cut the risk of heart failure by nearly 75% compared to the risk in patients who received the short treatment.
In some of the studies, the prolonged dose also reduced the risk of less severe problems such as weakened heart function. Patients had the same chance of survival and tumor shrinkage whether they received the long or short therapies, the Cochrane researchers found.
Recent studies have shown that the toxic heart effects of anthracycline therapy can have lasting effects on children's health. Dr Stephen Lipshulz, a pediatric cancer specialist at the University of Miami, said childhood cancer survivors “may be at significant risk of serious cardiovascular problems at a much younger age,” than researchers believed a few years ago.