Radiation necrosis/fibrosis treatment

AlaskaAngel · 01-13-2006, 05:22 PM

For those like me who ended up with rads necrosis/fibrosis:

Pentoxifylline and vitamin E promote regression of radiation-induced fibrosis

Graciela Flores
Reuters Health
Posting Date: January 13, 2006

Last Updated: 2006-01-13 14:36:14 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Treatment with combined pentoxifylline and alpha-tocopherol can cause regression of radiation-induced fibrosis, but long-term therapy is needed to sustain benefits, researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

"When radiation comes in contact with tissue, any type of tissue, you get fibrosis, and years later, you can also get necrosis," noted Dr. Sylvie Delanian in comments to Reuters Health. "Most medical doctors considered this irreversible, but we showed that this therapy works. We showed that some of these complications can be reduced," she said.

To determine the maximum response and the time taken to achieve response with the combination of pentoxifylline and vitamin E, Dr. Delanian from Hopital Saint-Louis, in Paris, France, and her colleagues conducted a retrospective study of 44 women with 55 distinct fibrotic lesions induced by radiation therapy for breast cancer.

The patients received the combination therapy twice daily for either 6 to 12 months (short treatment) or 24 to 48 months (long treatment), after which the reduction in the size of the fibrotic region and in the global score of late injury was measured.

The investigators found that the short- and long-term treatment regimens significantly improved both outcome measures. "Lesions were reduced by half after 6 months and by two thirds after 1 year," Dr. Delanian said.

The regimen was also well tolerated. "No patient stopped the treatment because of an adverse event." But when the treatment was stopped, the lesions returned. "We need long-term treatment, of 2 to 3 years," Dr. Delanian said.

The researcher noted that although the paper focuses on lesions of the breast, the treatment is devised to treat all sorts of fibrosis.

J Clin Oncol 2006;23:8570-8579.