A recent article in Annals of Oncology reports new patient-reported outcomes data from the S-TRAC study to suggest that adjuvant sunitinib treatment in patients with a high risk of recurrence of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was linked to increased symptoms and a worse health-related quality of life (HRQoL) compared with placebo.

The S-TRAC study showed that adjuvant sunitinib significantly improved disease-free survival in patients at high risk of recurrence of RCC following nephrectomy compared to placebo. However, an earlier study (ASSURE) found there was no treatment advantage in RCC for adjuvant therapy with sunitinib or sorafenib when compared to placebo.

Not only does adjuvant treatment with sunitinib have mixed study results, these new data in patients with a high risk of recurrence of RCC have demonstrated that adjuvant sunitinib treatment also resulted in a worse quality of life for patients who are tumour-free and who may never relapse.

“Patients on sunitinib did report increased symptoms and reduced HRQoL, but these changes were generally not clinically meaningful, apart from appetite loss and diarrhoea, and were expected in the context of known sunitinib effects,” wrote the authors of the article.

Read more in Cancer Therapy Advisor here