Jordan Agay: Folate Deficiency in Patients Receiving PARP Inhibitors
Jordan Agay, Public Health and Bioinformatics Student at The George Washington University and Clinical Product Strategy and Feedback Intern at hc1, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article by N. Rippel et al., published in Blood Red Cells and Iron, adding:
“I came across a study I thought was worth sharing.
Researchers at Mount Sinai’s Tisch Cancer Center published findings focusing on anemia in patients taking PARP inhibitors (used to treat BRCA1/2-related ovarian, breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers).
The assumption has generally been that this anemia comes from bone marrow suppression, just a known side effect of the drug.
Their data suggests that’s not always the case.
3.1% of patients in the study developed significant folate deficiency anemia.
Median hemoglobin dropped from 11.1 to 7.0 g/dL.
Nearly two-thirds of those who developed folate deficiency anemia needed transfusions, and 75% of them had some kind of disruption to their cancer treatment, whether a dose reduction, a hold, or discontinuation.
What stood out to me is that folate deficiency shows up on a basic blood test and is treatable with an inexpensive vitamin.
If this gets picked up more broadly, it could mean fewer transfusions, fewer hospital stays, and fewer interruptions to treatment for patients.”
Title: PARP inhibitor–associated folate deficiency anemia
Authors: N. Rippel, D. I. Nathan, W. Fu, J. M. Liu, I. Shapira, P. Klein

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