A study examining differences between men and women receiving immune or targeted cancer therapies found that women faced more adverse events than men, just as they face more adverse events with chemotherapy, according to the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
For the study, published Feb. 4, researchers analyzed cases of adverse events in 23,296 patients in phase II and III clinical treatments using data from SWOG Cancer Research Network between July 1, 1989 to June 30, 2019. The patients had received three main treatment types: 17,417 received chemotherapy, 2,319 received immunotherapy and 3,560 received targeted therapy.
Key findings:
- Overall, 64.6 percent of participants experienced one or more severe adverse events.
- Women had a 49 percent increased risk for adverse events among those receiving immunotherapy than men.
- Women receiving chemotherapy or immunotherapy experienced increased severe hematologic adverse events.
- No statistically significant sex differences in risk of nonhematologic adverse events were found.
Given the particularly large sex difference in adverse events for patients receiving immunotherapy, the authors suggested more study of this topic.