Frequency of febrile neutropenia in breast cancer patients receiving epirubicin and docetaxel/paclitaxel with colony-stimulating growth factors: a comparison of filgrastim or lenograstim with pegfilgrastim.

OBJECTIVE: Recombinant granulocyte colony-stimulating factors (G-CSF) have been shown to be effective in reducing the risk of infections associated with antitumour chemotherapy. This report describes a single-centre experience of the efficacy of pegfilgrastim compared with filgrastim or lenograstim in reducing the incidence of febrile neutropenia in patients receiving combination chemotherapy with taxane and epirubicin in a neoadjuvant and adjuvant setting.

METHODS: A total of 118 patients with breast cancer were treated with either epirubicin 75 mg/m(2) and docetaxel 75 mg/m(2) or epirubicin 90 mg/m(2) and paclitaxel 200 mg/m(2) every 3 weeks; 88 received G-CSF support with daily filgrastim or lenograstim and 30 with pegfilgrastim once per cycle.

RESULTS: Eight patients (9.1%) with prophylactic filgrastim or lenograstim support developed febrile neutropenia, as well as 1 patient (3.3%) in the pegfilgrastim group (p = 0.445). Febrile neutropenia occurred in 13 (2.7%) of 476 filgrastim or lenograstim supported chemotherapy cycles and in 2 (1.2%) of 172 cycles with pegfilgrastim support (p = 0.376). The frequency of chemotherapy delays and dose reductions was not significantly different between the two G-CSF treatment groups.

CONCLUSION: These data show a trend towards superiority of pegfilgrastim over filgrastim or lenograstim in reducing the frequency of febrile neutropenia in patients treated with taxane and epirubicin chemotherapy regimens for breast cancer.