New Drug May Offer Hope to Some With Lung Cancer
(HealthDay News) -- Maintenance therapy with the drug pemetrexed improves the survival of people with non-small-cell lung cancer whose disease has not progressed after chemotherapy, a new study has found.
Nearly 90 percent of all people who die from lung cancer have non-small-cell tumors. At the time the cancer is discovered, it's considered advanced about 40 percent of the time, according to background information in a news release from The Lancet, which is publishing the study. Chemotherapy reduces the tumors in just 40 percent of advanced cases, it said.
The phase 3 study included 663 people in 20 countries who had an advanced stage of the cancer but no disease progression after four cycles of platinum-based chemotherapy. They were randomly selected to be given pemetrexed or a placebo in 21-day cycles.
The cancers did not progress for 4.3 months, on average, in people in the pemetrexed group, compared with 2.6 months in the placebo group, the study found. People given pemetrexed survived an average of 13.4 months, compared with 10.6 months for those given the placebo.
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