Heart Drug May Help Cancer Patients

New research has suggested that a certain kind of common heart drug could increase survival in women with ovarian cancer by up to four years. The retrospective study of 1,425 women noted that the women were taking the drug to treat hypertension or another heart condition, not as part of their cancer treatment. Within the group that received them, those who were given a nonselective beta antagonist, or NSBB, survived a median of 94.9 months, compared with 38 months when given a beta-1-adrenergic receptor selective agent, or SBB. Of those, 269 had received beta blockers during their treatment.

The researchers found that for patients receiving any beta-blocker, the median overall survival was 47.8 months versus 42 months for nonusers.

Study author Professor Anil Sood said the study showed that stress hormones fuelled progression of ovarian and other cancers, and that beta-blockers might be a new way to stifle that effect.

According to Sood, the usefulness of beta-blockers was unclear until now. More than 14,000 will die from it, making it the fifth most deadly cancer among women. It is only natural that any drug which increases patients’ survival is of great interest to scientists, but the researchers warned that more research needs to be conducted.

Beta blockers work by stopping the release of stress hormones from receptors in the body. Risk factors include older age, obesity, and never carrying a pregnancy or first full-term pregnancy after age 35, according to the American Cancer Society’s website.

Indications for beta-blocker use included hypertension as well as arrhythmia and postmyocardial infarction management. They cautioned that beta blockers can cause significant side effects that could prevent their widespread use in patients with cancer, however. Then they potentially could be used as an adjuvant therapy during surgical recovery and chemotherapy to decrease tumor growth, delays in wound healing and metastasis.

“The ability to show improved survival using non-selective agents – which inhibit a specific stress pathway – is the culmination of years of research into ovarian cancer biology and pathogenesis”, he said.

One cancer charity has described the findings as “exciting”.

Nevertheless, many research investigating using beta blockers have come to conflicting conclusions – a proven fact that the researchers consider could also be as a result of small affected person numbers. “To our information, the present research is the primary to look at the relationships with affected person outcomes based mostly on particular varieties of beta blockers”.

Dr Christina Annunziata, of the US National Cancer Institute, wrote in a separate editorial in Cancer: ‘This study lays the groundwork for insightful investigation into repurposing cardiovascular medications to cancer therapeutics’.