Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor antibody bevacizumab reduced the risk of anemia associated with chemotherapy–A meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) may play a role in erythropoiesis. We performed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCT) to determine the effect of the anti-VEGF antibody bevacizumab on anemia in cancer patients treated with chemotherapy. Methods. Databases from PUBMED, the Web of Science, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and abstracts presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conferences until May 2010 were searched to identify relevant studies. Eligible studies included prospective RCTs in which the combination of bevacizumab and chemotherapy was compared with chemotherapy alone. Summary incidence rate, relative risk (RR), and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated. Results. A total of 6439 patients with a variety of solid tumors were included for analysis from 11 RCTs. Among those patients receiving bevacizumab and chemotherapy, the incidences of all-grade and high-grade (grade 3 and above) anemia were 17.8% (95% CI: 11.1–27.1%) and 2.8% (95% CI: 1.6–5.0%) respectively. In comparison with chemotherapy alone, bevacizumab significantly reduced all-grade (RR, 0.79; 95% CI: 0.66–1.0, p = 0.007) and high-grade anemia (RR, 0.72; 95% CI: 0.57–0.90, p = 0.005). The effect did not vary significantly among bevacizumab doses (p = 0.88), tumor types (p = 0.75) or chemotherapy regimens (p = 0.98). Discussion. Bevacizumab may significantly reduce the risk of anemia with chemotherapy in cancer patients.

Acknowledgements

The study was partially funded by the Research Foundation of SUNY at Stony Brook. It has not played any role in design, collection, analysis, interpretation, and writing of the study. SW conceived the study, and was responsible for data analysis. All authors contributed to data collection, literature search, writing, tables, and figures. S.W had full access to all of the data in the study, and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Declaration of interest: S.W. received honoraria from Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Genentech Novartis, and is a speaker for Onyx, Pfizer, and Novartis. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.