Capecitabine monotherapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer – single site experience and literature review

Breast cancer (BC) is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy in women. In Poland, in 2005 13,000 new cases and 5,000 deaths due to BC were reported. The 5-year survival rate in metastatic BC (mBC) is 25%. Chemo-therapy, which is based on various combined regimens or single-agent therapies, remains the main modality in the treatment of mBC. It is generally accepted that in case of non-rapidly progressing or non life-threatening mBC therapy should be based on single-agent strategies. Single-agent chemotherapy in comparison to polychemotherapy is less toxic but still demonstrates a significant anti-tumour activity.
One of the popular drugs commonly used for monotherapy of mBC is capecitabine, a precursor of 5-fluorouracil.
In the following article we present our experience with single-agent capecitabine in 82 mBC patients treated in the Department of Chemotherapy at the Great Poland Cancer Centre in Poznan, Poland. The objective response rate was 12%. Capecitabine was well tolerated and relatively rare adverse events >G2 were manageable by symptomatic treatment and dose reduction. In general, the clinical efficacy of capecitabine as well as the overall and progression-free survival times observed in our group of mBC patients were similar to those reported in the literature.