Health-Related Quality of Life of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients on Newer Generation Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors Using the Filipino Version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy: The Leukemia (FACT-LEU) Tool

Filipino patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) exhibited positive health-related quality of life (HRQoL) using newer-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) as second or third-line therapy, according to a study presented at the 12^th International Congress on Myeloproliferative Neoplasms.

 This single-center, cross-sectional study included 33 chronic-phase CML patients who were at least 19 years old with stable comorbidities, taking newer-generation-TKIs as second-or-third line treatment. The newer-generation TKIs used in this study were Dasatinib (54.55%), Bosutinib (30.30%) and Ponatinib (15.15%). The researchers assessed HRQoL using the Filipino-version of the FACT-Leu© questionnaire. They employed descriptive statistics to analyze each patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics. To test for any variances, they used an independent sample T-test and one-way analysis of variance.

According to the results of the study, the following displayed favorable HRQoL scores on average: Trial Outcomes Index (106.15 + 12.27), FACT-G score (94.79 + 10.74) and FACT-Leu score (151.58 + 17.25). The researchers noted that they observed no significant differences between HRQOL with sex, marital status, educational attainment, employment, adverse drug events with concomitant dose adjustment and newer-generation TKI used. They also found insufficient evidence to conclude a correlation between overall FACT-Leu score and age, CML and treatment duration (p-value 0.7389, 0.4738, 0.6984).

“HRQoL evaluation is a vital part of disease management,” the research authors wrote in their conclusion. “This study demonstrated that Filipino CML patients using newer-generation TKIs as second or third-line therapy showed good HRQoL regardless of age, sex, marital status, educational attainment, employment, CML duration, treatment duration, presence or absence of adverse drug event with concomitant dose adjustment and newer-generation TKI used.”

Tanchanco C, et al. Health-Related Quality of Life of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients on Newer Generation Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors Using the Filipino Version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy – Leukemia (FACT-LEU) Tool at the Philippine General Hospital. Presented at the 12^th International Congress on Myeloproliferative Neoplasms; October 24-25, 2019; New York, NY.