Body Mass Index and Chemotherapy Completion among Patients Newly Diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer
It has been common knowledge that obese ovarian cancer patients did not have the same therapeutic benefit from chemo, with lower blood levels of drug activity called relative drug intensity, RDI.
Often women during their course of chemo have variations of the dose, this may be due to adverse side effects prompting dose reduction. Obese women require higher doses of chemo because of their high body surface area. This sometimes meant that the adverse effects were more intense, as a result drug capping of chemo was introduced, especially of the drug Paclitaxel which is part of the commonest initial chemo drug course for oavrian cancer.
The result was that maximum RDI at 100% in the obese is rarely achieved, with consequently less likelihood of cure. As a result, this drug capping was discontinued in 2012. This study looked at RDI achieved in 622 patients from the Yale Tumour Registry who started Paclitaxel treatment during the period 2012-2022.
The results showed that about 1/3rd of the group stopped treatment early with nearly all patients having some interruption of their chemo. Most patients did not achieve an RDI of 100%. The obese patients showed no worse RDI compared to the non-obese and were no more likely to not complete the treatment course.
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