The effect of COX-2 inhibitor on capecitabine-induced hand-foot syndrome in patients with stage II/III colorectal cancer: A phase II randomized prospective study

Abstract

Purpose: Hand-foot syndrome (HFS) is a common adverse event that can be induced by capecitabine. It is hypothesized that capecitabine (Hoffmann-La Roche Inc.) based chemotherapy can cause overexpression of COX-2 in tumor and healthy tissue, which finally induced HFS in hands and feet. Based on this, we believed that a selected COX-2 inhibitor (celecoxib, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals LLC) could ease HFS. We designed a prospective clinical study to test the hypothesis. Methods: From August 2008 to January 2010, 110 patients with stage II/III colorectal cancer who were eligible for adjuvant chemotherapy were enrolled in the study and divided into 4 groups by random, but 9 patients did not finish at least 4 cycles of chemotherapy. There were sixteen patients in capecitabine group, and fifteen patients in capecitabine and celecoxib group. Thirty-four patients were in XELOX (capecitabine plus oxaliplatine) group, and thirty-six patients in XELOX+ celecoxib group. All 101 patients finished chemotherapy and follow-up interviews. Results: The group that had received capecitabine and celecoxib had a significantly reduced frequency of >grade 1 hand-foot syndrome (29 vs. 72% P < 0.001), and >grade 2 (11.76% vs. 30% P = 0.024). Five patients experienced grade 3 HFS in capecitabine group and only 1 patient had grade 3 HFS in capecitabine and celecoxib group. There were 5 patients in capecitabine group who refused to go on chemotherapy because of HFS, but there was none in capecitabine and celecoxib group. Conclusions: From the result of this study, we could learn that celecoxib could reduce HFS that was induced by capecitabine. So we recommend that celecoxib can be used in capecitabine-based chemotherapy. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.