A new analysis published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology finds that a drug commonly used for cancer treatment may cause kidney damage in some patients. The drug, bevacizumab, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating glioblastoma brain tumors, metastasized breast cancer and other forms of cancer. Yet this new study, conducted by researchers at Stony Brook University Medical Center, suggests that taking the drug can increase cancer patients’ risk of kidney protein loss and resulting kidney damage. The authors conclude that physicians prescribing the drug for cancer treatment should be aware of these risks and carefully monitor patients’ kidney health when taking bevacizumab.
To examine the effect of bevacizumab on kidney health, researchers analyzed data from 16 different studies involving more than 12,000 patients with different types of cancer. They found that 2.2% of patients taking the drug developed symptoms of severe proteinuria, or kidney protein loss through urine. They also found that patients taking higher doses of the drug faced higher risk for proteinuria, and that those taking the drug in addition to undergoing chemotherapy faced nearly 4.8 times the risk for the harmful kidney condition compared with those treated with chemotherapy alone.
When the researchers analyzed the impact of bevacizumab by the type of cancer a patient was battling, they found that the risk for proteinuria was highest among patients with kidney tumors. More than one in ten (10.2%) of patients with kidney cancer who took bevacizumab developed proteinuria, the analysis showed.