Impact of angiogenic inhibition in the treatment of newly diagnosed and recurrent glioblastoma: a meta-analysis based on randomized controlled trials.

OBJECTIVE

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive primary malignant tumor of the central nervous system in adults with high recurrence and mortality rates. Although radiotherapy and temozolomide have become the standard therapeutic regimen for GBM as adjuvant chemoradiotherapy after surgical resection, clinical outcomes remain suboptimal. In recent years, targeted antiangiogenic therapy has attracted considerable attention, but its therapeutic efficacy and safety are still controversial.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of chemoradiotherapy with or without bevacizumab for the treatment of glioblastoma were collected by searching on the Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane, Ovid, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases from the date of database establishment to February 2022. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software after two investigators independently screened the literature, extracted data, and assessed the risk bias of included studies.

RESULTS

A total of 7 RCTs were included. The meta-analysis showed that bevacizumab in combination with chemoradiotherapy was superior to chemoradiotherapy alone in terms of progression-free survival (PFS), with a statistically significant difference. Interestingly, bevacizumab in combination with chemoradiotherapy improved PFS more significantly in recurrent glioblastoma than in newly diagnosed glioblastoma. However, for overall survival (OS), the combination of bevacizumab with chemoradiotherapy was similar to chemoradiotherapy alone, which was not significantly different. With regard to safety, the incidence of most adverse events was higher in the combination of bevacizumab and chemoradiotherapy than in chemoradiotherapy alone, especially in terms of hematologic adverse events.

CONCLUSIONS

Current evidence suggests that angiogenesis inhibitor-containing chemoradiotherapy regimens are preferentially recommended for patients with recurrent glioblastoma to prolong their progression-free survival, provided that safety is acceptable, but this does not confer a significant benefit on overall patient survival.