The bone is a very common site of metastasis in patients with advanced cancer. Skeletal metastases are most common in breast and prostate cancer, but virtually any advanced cancer may disseminate to the bone. On the basis of recent advances in the understanding of bone remodeling processes, denosumab, a fully human monoclonal antibody against RANK-L, has been developed. Phase III clinical trials have demonstrated that denosumab is well tolerated and effective in the treatment of bone loss and prevention of skeletal-related events in patients with bone metastases.

Colorectal cancer is the third most frequent malignant neoplasm in Western countries. After complete resection, 5-year overall survival varies according to the initial stage. Adjuvant chemotherapy (CT) is indicated in patients with colon cancer at high-risk stage II, stage III and after complete resection of metastases. 5-Fluorouracil (5FU), alone or modulated with levamisol or leucovorin (LV), oral fluoropyrimidines, raltitrexed, irinotecan and oxaliplatin have been studied as adjuvant therapy for colon cancer. Nowadays, oxaliplatin-based regimens, FOLFOX or FLOX, are considered as the standard adjuvant CT. If there are contraindications for oxaliplatin, the best alternatives are capecitabine or continuous infusion of 5FU/LV. The role of monoclonal antibodies, cetuximab and bevacizumab, combined with oxaliplatin/fluoropyrimidine-based CT is under investigation in clinical trials. This article reviews the state of the art and the future perspectives of adjuvant therapy in colon cancer. Prognostic and predictive factors are also commented on.

Summary:In the present study, we analyze the efficacy of prophylaxis with meropenem in patients receiving a matched related donor allogeneic transplant. In total, 38 patients were sequentially treated with meropenem starting on the day of the first febrile episode (n ¼ 17, group A) vs prophylactic meropenem starting on the first day with o500/mm 3 granulocytes (n ¼ 21, group B), and maintained until resolution of fever or after granulocyte count 4500/mm 3 . Of these, 16 (94%) patients in group A developed fever as compared to 16 (76%) in group B (P ¼ 0.02). While only one patient in group A did not require first-line antibiotherapy, there were seven (33%) in group B who did not require it (P ¼ 0.01) since fever lasted less than 72 h. In addition, 52% patients in group B did not require second-line antibiotics as compared to 11% among patients in group A (P ¼ 0.04). In multivariate analysis prophylaxis with meropenem (HR ¼ 2.83, 95% CI (1-8.02); P ¼ 0.04) and disease status at transplant (HR for early stage ¼ 0.15, 95% CI (0.04-0.62); P ¼ 0.04) significantly influenced the development of fever. In conclusion, the current pilot study suggests that the use of prophylaxis with meropenem during the period of neutropenia in patients undergoing allogeneic transplantation favorably affects the morbidity of the procedure by reducing febrile episodes.

This study confirms that oxaliplatin desensitization protocols are safe and effective and allow patients to continue with the treatment that initially caused an HSR.

Although there is published research on the impact of venous thromboembolism (VTE) on quality of life (QoL), this issue has not been thoroughly investigated in patients with cancer—particularly using specific questionnaires. We aimed to examine the impact of acute symptomatic VTE on QoL of patients with malignancies. This was a multicenter, prospective, case-control study conducted in patients with cancer either with (cases) or without (controls) acute symptomatic VTE. Participants completed the EORTC QLQ-C30, EQ-5D-3L, PEmb-QoL, and VEINES-QOL/Sym questionnaires. Statistically significant and clinically relevant differences in terms of global health status were examined. Between 2015 and 2018, we enrolled 425 patients (128 cases and 297 controls; mean age: 60.2 ± 18.4 years). The most common malignancies were gastrointestinal (23.5%) and lung (19.8%) tumors. We found minimally important differences in global health status on the EQ-5D-3L (cases versus controls: 0.55 versus 0.77; mean difference: −0.22) and EORTC QLQ-C30 (47.7 versus 58.4; mean difference: −10.3) questionnaires. There were minimally important differences on the PEmb-QoL questionnaire (44.4 versus 23; mean difference: −21.4) and a significantly worse QoL on the VEINES-QOL/Sym questionnaire (42.7 versus 51.7; mean difference: −9). In conclusion, we showed that acute symptomatic VTE adversely affects the QoL of patients with malignancies.