Limited role for extended maintenance temozolomide for newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

OBJECTIVE

To explore an association with survival of modifying the current standard of care for patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma of surgery followed by radiotherapy plus concurrent and 6 cycles of maintenance temozolomide chemotherapy (TMZ/RT → TMZ) by extending TMZ beyond 6 cycles.

METHODS

The German Glioma Network cohort was screened for patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma who received TMZ/RT → TMZ and completed ≥6 cycles of maintenance chemotherapy without progression. Associations of clinical patient characteristics, molecular markers, and residual tumor determined by magnetic resonance imaging after 6 cycles of TMZ with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed with the log-rank test. Multivariate analyses using the Cox proportional hazards model were performed to assess associations of prolonged TMZ use with outcome.

RESULTS

Sixty-one of 142 identified patients received at least 7 maintenance TMZ cycles (median 11, range 7-20). Patients with extended maintenance TMZ treatment had better PFS (20.5 months, 95% confidence interval [CI] 17.7-23.3, vs 17.2 months, 95% CI 10.2-24.2, = 0.035) but not OS (32.6 months, 95% CI 28.9-36.4, vs 33.2 months, 95% CI 25.3-41.0, = 0.126). However, there was no significant association of prolonged TMZ chemotherapy with PFS (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.8, 95% CI 0.4-1.6, = 0.559) or OS (HR = 1.6, 95% CI 0.8-3.3, = 0.218) adjusted for age, extent of resection, Karnofsky performance score, presence of residual tumor, O-methylguanine DNA methyltransferase promoter methylation status, or isocitrate dehydrogenase () mutation status.

CONCLUSION

These data may not support the practice of prolonging maintenance TMZ chemotherapy beyond 6 cycles.

CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE

This study provides Class III evidence that in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma, prolonged TMZ chemotherapy does not significantly increase PFS or OS.