Denosumab?

[Chelee]

Now that Denosumab has been approved for use...has anyone's onc started them on this instead of Zometa? From what I've read Denosumab is much more effective at stopping bone mets...yet I haven't heard of anyone that's on this yet?

Chelee

[StephN]

Hi -
I have a friend who is starting on Denosumab for persistent bone mets.

The information coming out of trials seems to give an edge to the D. over some established drugs that improve bone strength.

How are you doing? What treatment? Anyway, you seem to be better and that is the main thing!

[Debbie L.]

Chelee, it's possible that denosumab may offer a benefit but it's really early days and so far, as nearly as I can see, any improvement over more-tested bisphosphonates appears to be incremental (small) rather than groundbreaking.

It does look like denosumab will find a place, in providing benefits after bisphosphonates exhaust their (already-established) benefits. Or maybe we will find it's better to begin with denosumab. Or (alternatively) maybe we'll find currently not-seen side effects that reduce our enthusiasm. It's early days, as I said. Newer can be better, but it can be naive to assume that newer is always better.

Debbie Laxague

[Chelee]

Steph,
Is your friend switching from Zometa to Denosumab? Was this her onc's decision, or did your friend request to try it? Since the hard data has been so good on D I thought I would see alot of women already on this. But as Debbie just said we are still in the early days. I've done quite a bit of reading on this drug today and it still has most of the same SE's that Zometa has. Other then it did say there are no concerns about renal safety with denosumab like there is with Zometa. (That's a plus.) The risk of ONJ is similar with both drugs. One article says the D will come with a much higher price tag monthly. That could influence which drugs our onc's chooses in some cases.

Debbie, great post as I couldn't agree with you more. I've always been hesitate to try newer drugs till they have been out a while. I'm just waiting to see how many of our onc's start switching us over to denosumab now that is has the go ahead?

Chelee

[Pam P]

I asked my onc. last week what he thought about the new drug vs zometa which I'm on. He said he thought there was no big advantage with the newer one and no reason for me to switch from zometa. But in the future if I can't take zometa for some reason now I have another option to add.