Pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) is an improved formulation of doxorubicin with comparable effectiveness but significantly lower cardiotoxicity than conventional anthracycline. This study aimed to evaluate the real-world effectiveness and safety of PLD versus epirubicin as neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment for breast cancer. | Zhang et al. BMC Cancer 2021 21 1301 https s12885-021-09050-6 RESEARCH Open Access Effectiveness and safety of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin versus epirubicin as neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer a real-world study Jin Zhang1 Hongchuan Jiang2 Jian Zhang3 Guoqiang Bao4 Guoqiang Zhang5 Haibo Wang6 and Xi Wang7 Abstract Background Pegylated liposomal doxorubicin PLD is an improved formulation of doxorubicin with comparable effectiveness but significantly lower cardiotoxicity than conventional anthracycline. This study aimed to evaluate the real-world effectiveness and safety of PLD versus epirubicin as neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment for breast cancer. Methods Clinical data of invasive breast cancer patients who received neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy with PLD or epirubicin were retrospectively collected. Propensity score matching PSM was performed to reduce the risk of selection bias. The molecular typing of these patients included Luminal A Luminal B HER2-positive and basal-like triple-negative. The primary outcome was pathological complete response pCR rate for neoadjuvant chemotherapy and 3-year disease-free survival DFS rate for adjuvant chemotherapy. Noninferiority was suggested if the lower limit of the 95 CI for the 3-year DFS rate difference was greater than 10 . The secondary outcome was adverse reactions. Results A total of 1213 patients were included neoadjuvant n 274 adjuvant n 939 . pCR ypT0 Tis ypN0 rates of patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy were for the PLD group and for the epirubicin group but the difference was not statistically significant P . The 3-year DFS rate of patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy was 95 CI for the PLD group and 95 CI for the epirubicin group P . Rate difference between the two groups and its 95 CI was - . The lower limit of the 95 CI was gt suggesting that PLD is not be inferior to .
