EHA 2021 | QoL for patients with polycythemia vera or essential thrombocythemia
David Ross, MD, PhD, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, Australia, discusses quality of life (QoL) for patients with polycythemia vera and essential thrombocythemia, commenting on the chronic nature of these diseases resulting in a need for prolonged treatment and highlighting the limited trials investigating the targeting of specific symptoms in this population. This interview took place at the virtual European Hematology Association (EHA) Congress 2021.
Transcript (edited for clarity)
Most therapies for PV and ET have focused on the endpoint of reduced risk of thrombosis, but there’s perhaps been less emphasis on improvements in quality of life in PV and ET, certainly at least historically. I think that that’s a very important area because by their nature, these are chronic diseases and people with PV and ET are facing many years of living with these diseases and managing with whatever the available treatment can achieve...
Most therapies for PV and ET have focused on the endpoint of reduced risk of thrombosis, but there’s perhaps been less emphasis on improvements in quality of life in PV and ET, certainly at least historically. I think that that’s a very important area because by their nature, these are chronic diseases and people with PV and ET are facing many years of living with these diseases and managing with whatever the available treatment can achieve.
So, I think that ensuring that we optimize quality of life while also reducing the risk of thrombosis is an important endpoint. And because of the positive clinical trials in this sphere, certainly until recent years, there’s relatively limited information about which therapies are most effective to target the symptoms that people have. Particularly prevalent symptoms would be fatigue as number one, but also vascular related symptoms, such as headaches or erythromelalgia, or itching, or other cytokine driven symptoms. So, it remains to be seen whether these things can be substantially improved by novel therapies that’re being tried at present.
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Disclosures
David Ross, MD, PhD, has received research funding and honoraria for lectures and advisory boards from Novartis and BMS/Celgene.
