Prevention of Taxane-associated Acute Pain Syndrome With Etoricoxib for Breast Cancer Patients: A Phase II Randomized Trial

Docetaxel plays a key role in reducing the recurrence of early-stage breast cancer as well as improving survival outcomes of advanced breast cancer patients, but it causes a variety of adverse events, including myalgia and arthralgia, peripheral neuropathy, febrile neutropenia, and hypersensitivity reactions and so on. The myalgia and arthralgia induced by docetaxel, which have been together referred to as taxane-associated acute pain syndrome (T-APS), were reported to occur in 3.6% to 70% of patients, and the symptoms usually occurred 24-48 hours after docetaxel infusion and lasted for 3-5 days. Previous studies found that patients who experienced myalgia and arthralgia due to docetaxel administration were more likely to have chronic peripheral neuropathy, which supported that T-APS could be a form of neurologic toxicity. T-APS may significantly influence patients' sleep and daily life, and even caused discontinuation of chemotherapy. Therefore, it is clinically meaningful to explore some prophylactic drugs for the T-APS. Previous studies had used glutamine, corticosteroids, Shakuyaku-Kanzo-To (a Japanese herb), and gabapentin to prevent paclitaxel-induced myalgia and arthralgia, but failed to provide enough evidence for clinical practice. Etoricoxib, a selective COX-2 inhibitor, is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that has showed comparable efficacy in acute and chronic pain, with fewer gastrointestinal (GI) adverse events compared with traditional NSAIDs. Therefore, we conducted a phase II randomized clinical trial to investigate whether etoricoxib could prevent or ameliorate the incidence and/or severity of docetaxel-induced acute pain syndrome. We also aimed to determine if there are any improvement of the late-onset peripheral neuropathy as well as quality of life with prophylactic etoricoxib for breast cancer patients who receive docetaxel chemotherapy.