Trastuzumab-related cardiotoxicity in the elderly: a role for cardiovascular risk factors.

BACKGROUND: Elderly breast cancer patients are usually excluded from clinical trials. Nevertheless, with the increasing use of trastuzumab, there is a need to address trastuzumab-related cardiotoxicity in this population. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Records for patients ≥ 70 years treated with trastuzumab since 2005 were reviewed. New York Heart Association classification was used to document symptomatic cardiotoxicity. Asymptomatic cardiotoxicity was defined as an absolute drop ≥ 10% with a final left ventricular ejection fraction < 50% or an absolute drop > 20%. RESULTS: Forty-five patients, median age 75.9 years (range 70-92), were identified. Three of 24 (12.5%) early breast cancer patients and 5 of 21 (23.8%) with advanced disease experienced asymptomatic cardiotoxicity. Four of 45 patients (8.9%), all with advanced breast cancer, developed symptomatic congestive heart failure. All but one of them recovered in a median time of 5 weeks (range 3-21). Patients with trastuzumab-related cardiotoxicity presented more often with cardiovascular risk factors, such as history of cardiac disease (33% versus 9.1%, P = 0.017) and diabetes (33.3% versus 6.1%, P = 0.010), compared with those without. CONCLUSIONS: Elderly breast cancer patients with a history of cardiac disease and/or diabetes treated with trastuzumab have an increased incidence of cardiotoxicity. Continuous cardiac monitoring is especially advised in this population.

Molecular analysis of 30 Niemann-Pick type C patients from Spain.

Mutations in the NPC1 or NPC2 gene are responsible for Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease (OMIM #257220), an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorder caused by an incorrect regulation of intracellular lipid trafficking. A molecular analysis carried out in 30 unrelated patients identified 43 distinct mutations in the NPC1 gene, 12 of which had not been previously described. The novel NPC1 alleles were four amino acid substitutions (p.F995L, p.F1079S, p.L1106P and p.G1209E), a nonsense mutation (p.E1089X), a 1-bp insertion (p.L1117PfsX4), an in-frame deletion (p.N916del), four intronic changes (c.58-3280C>G, c.882-28A>T, c.2604+5G>A and c.3591+5G>A) that affect the splicing mechanism, and the first deletion including the whole gene described in NPC disease. In all the splice site mutations, the formation of abnormal spliced transcripts was confirmed by cDNA analysis, and mRNA degradation by the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay process was also assessed. As it has been previously reported in this disease, genotype-phenotype correlations are limited due to the large number of private mutations. We describe for the first time one homozygous patient for p.I1061T mutation, who presented the severe infantile clinical onset, and another patient with the variant biochemical phenotype, whose clinical presentation was the neonatal form of the disease.