Study of epoetin alfa in Breast Cancer patients published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute

In patients with high-risk Breast Cancer, addition of epoetin alfa to the chemotherapy regimen may help avoid the decrease in hemoglobin levels and resulting Anaemia often seen in these patients and does not negatively affect relapse-free or overall survival. In a randomized study of patients in the AGO-ETC trial of 643 patients who received the chemotherapy regimen of epirubicin, paclitaxel, and cyclophosphamide, 324 were randomly assigned to receive epoetin alfa. Patients without epoetin alfa had a statistically significant reduction in hemoglobin levels and required more RBC transfusions than those in the epoetin alfa treatment group (28.1% vs 12.8%).

Epoetin alfa had no impact on relapse-free or overall survival or intra-mammary relapse. However, patients treated with epoetin alfa were approximately twice as likely to experience thrombotic events compared with the control group (7% vs 3%). Results are published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute: "Epoetin alfa reduces anemia in breast cancer patients with no negative impact on survival" Volker Moebus et al . NCI J Natl Cancer Inst (2013) 105 (14): 1. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djt208