WEDNESDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- Bevacizumab is associated with improved cardiac output and reduced duration and number of nose bleeds in patients with severe hepatic forms of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), according to a phase 2 study published in the March 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Sophie Dupuis-Girod, M.D., Ph.D., of the Hôpital Louis Pradel in Bron, France, and colleagues conducted a trial involving 25 patients (aged 18 to 70 years) with confirmed HHT, severe liver involvement, and a high cardiac index related to HHT. Patients received six injections of bevacizumab every 14 days, over 2.5 months, and were followed for six months after treatment initiation.
The researchers found that, of the 24 patients who had echocardiograms available for reread, 20 patients had a response, with normalization of the cardiac index (complete response) in three and partial response in 17. At the start of treatment the median cardiac index was 5.05 L/min/m² and it decreased significantly at three and six months after treatment initiation (4.2 and 4.1 L/min/m², respectively). A complete response was seen in five patients and a partial response in 15 of the 23 for whom data were available at six months. The mean duration of epistaxis significantly decreased from inclusion (221 minutes per month) to 134 minutes at three months and 43 minutes at six months.
"Administration of bevacizumab was associated with a decrease in cardiac output and reduced duration and number of episodes of epistaxis," the authors write.
One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Abstract
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