Efficacy and safety of bevacizumab plus capecitabine for metastatic colorectal cancer

Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab plus capecitabine in trea-ting metastatic colorectal cancer(mCRC).Methods Eleven patients with mCRC(6 females and 5 males)were enrolled in this study.Bevacizumab was given with 5 mg /kg every two weeks in five patients,10 mg /kg every two weeks in four patients and 15 mg /kg every three weeks in two patients.All patients received capecit-abine 2 000 mg /m2 per day for 14 days.Results Five of 11 patients had partial response and five patients had stable disease and two patients had progressive disease.The disease control rate was 90.9%.The progress-free survival were 4 months and the median overall survival time were 15 months.The adverse events related to bev-acizumab were grade 2 hypertension in 3 patients(27.3%)and grade 1 or 2 proteinuria in 4 patients(36.4%).Other adverse events such as mucositis,fatigue,subcutaneous haemorrhage were also observed.No thromboembolism or severe haemorrhage happened.No other grade 3 or 4 adverse events were observed.The adverse events in the combined therapy were hand-foot-syndrome(54.6%),diarrhea(27.3%),and neutropenia(18.2%),mainly due to capecitabine.Conclusions The combination of bevacizumab plus capecitabine has definite benefit in patients with mCRC.However,these benefits can not be maintained after the withdrawal of bevacizumab.The adverse drug reactions are well tolerated.