Abstract
Background: Hyponatremia is well known phenomenon in cancer patients. The aim of our retrospective study was to assess the relationship of natremia levels to predict treatment with erlotinib and also to assess the prognosis of patients with hyponatremia.
Patients and metods: We analyzed data of 544 patients with advanced-staged non-small cell lung cancer treated with erlotinib. Results: Hyponatremia was measured in 21.5 % patients before treatment with erlotinib.
We found a significant increase in the effectiveness of treatment with erlotinib in patients with normal levels of sodium to hyponatremic patients. PFS and OS was also significantly higher in patients with normal natremia.
Multivariate Cox model then demonstrated that natrmia were independent factors for PFS and OS. Conslusion: We reported hyponatremia as not only prognostic marker in NSCLC patients but also as predictive marker of erlotinib treatment efficacy as independent factor at our large retrospective study.
The possible effect for practise use in clinical practice is bigger thanks the simple possibility of testing of hyponatremia and the low cost of this biomarker.