Patients with lowest BMI have shortest survival in pooled analysis of bev in mCRC

ESMO 17th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer

2015-07-01

(Press-News.org) BARCELONA-LUGANO, 1 July 2015 - Patients with the lowest body mass index (BMI) had the shortest overall survival in an analysis of bevacizumab studies in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) presented for the first time today at the ESMO 17th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2015 in Barcelona.(1)

"There is good evidence that obesity increases the risk of getting colorectal cancer and that it increases the risk of colorectal cancer recurrence after curative therapy," said lead study author Dr Yousuf Zafar, associate professor of medicine at Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina. "What we did not know prior to these results is whether there is a relationship between obesity and survival in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer."

He continued: "There is evidence that, at least in the US, obese patients may be at risk to receive lower doses of chemotherapy, so we hypothesised that obesity would be associated with worse survival in patients with colorectal cancer."

The current study analysed overall survival and progression-free survival according to four categories of BMI ( END

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