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Preventing Anthracycline-induced Cardiotoxicity
Because anthracyclines, a class of drugs used to treat cancer, potentially pose the risk of cardiotoxicity, researchers from Romania conducted a study that looked at whether nebivolol could prevent heart failure in patients taking these medications.
They enrolled 60 patients with HER-2 negative breast cancer who were about to start treatment with doxorubicin. Half of the group received 5 mg of nebivolol per day during the 6 cycles of cytotoxic treatment, the remaining 30 patients received the same 6 cycles of treatment but no nebivolol.
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After 6 months of treatment, imaging showed that the nebivolol treatment group did not experience any significant changes. However, this wasn’t true for the control group. “Tissue Doppler imaging revealed significant alterations of LV diastolic function, assessed by a decrease of myocardial velocities,” according to an accompanying statement about their findings. “Speckle-tracking imaging assessed in the control group showed a statistically significant alteration of the LV systolic function, of longitudinal and radial strains, as well as of the strain rates.”
The research was presented as an abstract titled “Protective effect of nebivolol on anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity, assessed by tissue Doppler velocities and by speckle tracking echocardiography” at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2016.
Earlier this month, researchers looking at pooled data found an association between obesity and increased cardiotoxicity when taking anthracyclines, Reuters reported. Their findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
--Stephanie Vaccaro
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