Ketamine Matches ‘Gold Standard’ in Major Depression Trial
SAN FRANCISCO — When it came to improving treatment-resistant major depression in outpatients without psychotic features, ketamine worked just as well as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), the ELEKT-D randomized trial found. Following a 3-week treatment period, 55.4% of the patients in the ketamine group and 41.2% of those in the ECT group had a treatment response, […]
High-Quality Foster Care Protects Tots From Psychological Harms of Deprivation
SAN FRANCISCO — Placement into foster care after institutional care may help protect young children against the psychological harms of early severe deprivation, according to an analysis of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). In this randomized controlled trial, young Romanian children who were assigned to foster care had significantly better cognitive, physical, and neural […]
Family Gun Culture May Play a Role in Teens’ Risk of Firearm Suicide
SAN FRANCISCO — Many teens who died by firearm suicide grew up in gun-owning families, according to a small psychological autopsy study. Interviews with family members of nine teens who died by firearm suicide showed that 89% of decedents had prior family engagement with firearms or the family considered itself to be engaged in firearm […]
ICI/TKI Combo Maintains Survival Benefit in Advanced RCC
SAN FRANCISCO — First-line nivolumab (Opdivo) plus cabozantinib (Cabometyx) continued to demonstrate clinically meaningful survival benefits in advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). An update of the CheckMate 9ER trial, which compared the immune checkpoint inhibitor/tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) doublet with the TKI sunitinib (Sutent), showed that after 44 months of median follow-up, median progression-free survival […]
Pembrolizumab Active in BCG-Unresponsive Papillary High-Risk Bladder Cancer
SAN FRANCISCO — Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) monotherapy showed encouraging antitumor activity in patients with papillary high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (HR NMIBC) that was unresponsive to Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) treatment. In a cohort of patients in the KEYNOTE-057 study who had 45 months of follow-up, those treated with pembrolizumab (n=32) had an estimated 12-month disease-free survival (DFS) […]
Escalated ADT Falls Short in Men With High-Risk Features After Prostatectomy
SAN FRANCISCO — Add-on hormone therapy plus an antiandrogen to salvage radiation and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) did not boost survival outcomes in high-risk prostate cancer. In the FORMULA-509 trial, the addition of 6 months of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and apalutamide (Erleada) to salvage radiation (RT) and 6 months of ADT with a GnRH agonist […]
Add-On Olaparib Continues to Show Benefit in First-Line Treatment of mCRPC
SAN FRANCISCO — Adding the PARP inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) to standard-of-care abiraterone (Zytiga) as initial treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) extended median progression-free survival (PFS), according to final results of the double-blind phase III PROpel study reported here. There was also a trend toward an improvement in median overall survival (OS). At the […]
Adding Talazoparib to Enzalutamide Boosts PFS in Metastatic Prostate Cancer
SAN FRANCISCO — Treatment with the PARP inhibitor talazoparib (Talzenna) plus enzalutamide (Xtandi) significantly improved radiographic progression-free survival (rPFS) compared with enzalutamide plus placebo in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), the phase III TALAPRO-2 trial showed. Among 805 randomized patients, rPFS assessed by blinded independent central review was not reached in those who […]
Rucaparib Gets a Win in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer
SAN FRANCISCO — Imaging-based progression-free survival (PFS) was significantly longer with the PARP inhibitor rucaparib (Rubraca) compared with physician’s choice of therapy in patients with BRCA or ATM-associated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), the phase III TRITON3 study showed. All patients in the study had already progressed after treatment with a second-generation androgen receptor-pathway inhibitor […]
No Negative Neurodevelopmental Issues With Late Exposure to Antenatal Steroids
SAN FRANCISCO – Giving late preterm antenatal corticosteroids did not impact childhood neurodevelopmental outcomes, a researcher reported. In a follow-up to the ALPS study, there were no statistically significant differences in the scores of children exposed to corticosteroids or to placebo in the third trimester based on cognitive testing, according to Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman, MD, of […]