Several HFS prevention strategies have been tested in randomized controlled trials, but none has been distinctly proven to be successful. During the past decade, pyridoxine had been one of the most frequently studied candidates, but it failed to show efficacy in HFS prevention [6, 7, 13]. Recently, one study reported the potential of celecoxib to prevent HFS by reducing the overexpression of cyclooxygenase-2 in tissue injury and necrosis induced by systemic anticancer agents [14]. Some meta-analyses showed that celecoxib could effectively reduce chemotherapy-induced grade 2 or higher HFS [15–17]. Despite its potential efficacy in preventing HFS, long-term celecoxib should be used with caution because of the associated cardiovascular side effects.
Urea-based cream is an inexpensive, readily available, and well-tolerated moisturizer and keratolytic agent. The hypothesized mechanisms of urea cream in preventing HFS include hyperkeratosis prevention, induction of keratocyte necrosis, and inhibition of chemotherapy-induced cutaneous inflammation [3]. The preventive property of urea cream for hand-foot skin reaction was demonstrated in patients receiving sorafenib for hepatocellular carcinoma [9]. However, several randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses on capecitabine- or chemotherapy-induced HFS reported that when compared with placebo, urea cream had insignificant efficacy in HFS prevention [5, 15–17]. A recent meta-analysis by Pandy et al implied that both urea cream and celecoxib were effective in preventing HFS in patients receiving systemic cancer therapy [10]. Although urea cream for HFS prophylaxis was determined as ineffective in a randomized clinical trial [5], it was reported to be beneficial in the meta-analyses of patients receiving capecitabine and sorafenib [3, 10]. In addition, urea cream application from the initiation of capecitabine is a common practice of some experts in Thailand. Considering the aforementioned, this study was conducted to evaluate the potential of urea cream as an HFS preventive strategy in patients receiving capecitabine. Compared with previous randomized controlled trials, this study had a longer follow-up that covered the entire period of capecitabine treatment. Moreover, we determined the degree of HFS during each visit and prospectively recorded drug compliance and outside-protocol topical agent use.
To our best knowledge, our report was the first randomized controlled study on the potential benefit of urea cream for capecitabine-associated HFS, with extensive follow-up throughout the entire period of capecitabine therapy. We demonstrated trends of lower HFS incidence and lower proportion of severe HFS in patients who received urea cream than in those who received usual care alone. Although this report failed to show a significant benefit of urea cream in decreasing the HFS rate as a primary endpoint, there was a trend toward a 6% improvement in the rate of any grade HFS. Although our trial had sufficient power to show the substantial benefits of urea cream, a larger study would be required to demonstrate the moderate and clinically meaningful benefits of urea cream.
Our study observed an HFS incidence that was in the low end of the previously reported range [18–21]. One possible reason was that most of our patients received capecitabine at a dose of 2,000 mg/m2 rather than a larger dose of 2,500 mg/m2. This substantial reduction in the capecitabine dose was needed to prevent other AEs, such as myelosuppression, because majority of our patients received capecitabine in combination with other chemotherapy agents, mainly oxaliplatin. This situation might explain the absence of a demonstrable significant benefit of urea cream for capecitabine-associated HFS prevention in our real-world practice. Moreover, the insufficient benefit of urea cream in reducing severe HFS can explain the reduced need for capecitabine modifications.
Although urea-based cream had no clear benefit in reducing the rate of any grade HFS in this study, it had a tendency to lessen the degree of HFS at a specific time point during capecitabine therapy. The peak onset of HFS was in early period of capecitabine therapy, but any grade HFS and severe HFS after the fourth cycle of capecitabine were less frequent in the urea cream group than in the usual care group. In the other words, the frequency of any grade HFS and severe HFS did not differ between the two groups during the first to the fourth capecitabine cycles. These findings might be useful for the adjustment of HFS preventive measures in clinical practice. The use of urea cream for HFS prevention might not be suitable for patients in whom only 3 months of capecitabine therapy (i.e., CAPEOX in low-risk stage III colon cancer) is planned. Alternatively, urea cream prophylaxis may have some benefits for HFS prevention or lessen the degree of HFS among patients who will undergo 6 months of capecitabine therapy. In addition, the timing of urea cream initiation remains questionable. Based on our results, initiation of urea cream prophylaxis may be delayed to the second or third cycle. Future well-planned randomized controlled trial is needed to confirm these inferences.
The main limitation of the study was the opened-label design, which might have potentiated some biases. At the time of any grade HFS occurrence, any treatment, including urea cream, was allowed based on the physician’s discretion. In real-world practice, some oncologists prescribe topical drugs for grade 1 HFS, even if it is temporary and may spontaneously resolve, whereas some oncologists initiate topical agents for ≥ grade 2 or significantly longer HFS. This difference might have affected the severity of the reported HFS but not the primary outcome. Despite appropriate instructions and reminders on compliance every visit, some patients reported incomplete urea cream use. Moreover, approximately 10% of patients in the usual care group preferred to seek for and use other topical agents. Nevertheless, most patients in the urea group adhered to the protocol with good compliance, and only a minority in control group reported the use of outside-protocol topical agents. We believed that these did not affect the main outcome of the study. Another limitation was carrying out the study at a single institution.