Cancer Research and Treatment

Original Article

Efficacy of Letrozole as First-Line Treatment of Postmenopausal Women with Hormone Receptor–Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer in Korea: Seung Hoon Beom, Jisu Oh, Tae-Yong Kim, Kyung-Hun Lee, Yaewon Yang, Koung Jin Suh, Hyeong-Gon Moon, Sae-Won Han, Do-Youn Oh, Wonshik Han, Tae-You Kim, Dong-Young Noh, Seock-Ah Im; Cancer Res Treat. 2017;49(2):454-463. Published online August 23, 2016; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4143/crt.2016.259

Purpose
Letrozole showed efficacy and generally favorable toxicities, along with the convenience of oral administration in postmenopausal patients with hormone receptor (HR)–positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC). To the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports of the clinical outcomes in Korean patients, although letrozole is widely used in practice. Therefore, this studywas conducted to affirm the efficacy and toxicities of letrozole in Korean patients.
Materials and Methods
This study retrospectively analyzed 84 HR-positive MBC patients who had been treated with letrozole from January 2001 to December 2012. Clinicopathological characteristics and treatment historywere extracted from medicalrecords. All patients received 2.5 mg letrozole once a day until there were disease progressions or unacceptable toxicity. Progression-free survival (PFS) was the primary endpoint, and secondary endpoints were overall survival (OS), objective response rate (ORR), and toxicity.
Results
The median age of the subjects was 59.3 years. Letrozole treatment resulted in a median PFS of 16.8 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.8 to 23.8) and a median OS of 56.4 months (95% CI, 38.1 to 74.7). The ORR was 36.9% for the 84 patients with measurable lesions. Multivariate analysis revealed symptomatic visceral disease (hazard ratio, 3.437; 95% CI, 1.576 to 7.495; p=0.002) and a disease-free interval ≤ 2 years (hazard ratio, 2.697; 95% CI, 1.262 to 5.762; p=0.010) were independently associated with shorter PFS. However, sensitivity to adjuvant hormone treatment was not related to PFS. Letrozole was generally well tolerated.
Conclusion
Letrozole showed considerable efficacy and tolerability as a first-line treatment in postmenopausal patients with HR-positive MBC.

Citations

Citations to this article as recorded by

Is hormonal therapy effective in advanced endometrial cancer? A systematic review and meta-analysis
Josee-Lyne Ethier, Danielle N. Desautels, Eitan Amir, Helen MacKay
Gynecologic Oncology.2017; 147(1): 158. CrossRef

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