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Mild Anemia Associated With Negative Effects on Quality of Life: Presented at ASCO

By Charlene Laino

ORLANDO, FL -- May 19, 2005 -- Mild anemia is associated with clinically significant impairments in quality of life in both men and women with cancer, results of a retrospective study show.

Barry Fortner, PhD, chief operating officer, Supportive Oncology Services, Memphis, Tennessee, talked about the results during a poster session here on May 16^th at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting (ASCO).

Mild anemia is often not treated in patients with cancer, as the standard treatment guidelines for cancer-associated anemia do not call for intervention until hemoglobin levels drop below 10 g/dL, he said.

To determine the effect on patients' well-being of hemoglobin levels below 10 mg/dL, Dr. Fortner and colleagues evaluated 3416 patients whose clinical data had been entered into a large community oncology database. Mild anemia was defined as hemoglobin concentrations in the range of 12 to 14 g/dL for men or 10 to 12 g/dL for women.

On the same day that hemoglobin levels were measured, patients completed the electronic Cancer Care Monitor screening tool, a validated measure of physical performance, symptom burden, and health-related quality of life. The measure uses a normalized T score, in which 50 is the mean and higher scores indicate progressively better quality of life, Dr. Fortner said.

Compared with the 471 men who had hemoglobin levels above 14 g/dL, the 327 men with hemoglobin levels of 12 to 14 g/dL had significantly impaired quality of life. The mean T score for men with hemoglobin levels greater than 14 g/dL was 53.6 points versus 49.4 points for those with a level of 12 to 14 g/dL.

Similarly, the 2169 women with hemoglobin levels above 12 g/dL had a T score of 52.4 points, compared to 49.1 points for the 449 women with hemoglobin level of 10 to 12 g/dL.

"Symptom burden and performance were also worse in the patients with mild anemia, with a P value for the trend of less than .05," he said.

"The bottom line," Dr. Fortner said in an interview, "is that quality of life begins to decline as hemoglobin levels drop and anemia worsens."

The next step for research, he said, is to find out if treatments such as erythropoietic growth factor therapy would improve quality of life.

Amgen provided funding for this study.


[Presentation title: Mild Anemia is Associated With Greater Symptom Burden (SB) and Reduced Quality of Life (QoL) in Cancer Patients. Abstract 8123]

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