10 percent urea cream superior to new ointment for hand-foot syndrome

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

According to a new study published online ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers have found that 10% urea cream is superior to a newly introduced ointment containing various antioxidants at preventing hand-foot syndrome during the first 6 weeks of treatment with capecitabine for gastrointestinal or breast cancer.

For the phase III trial, researchers enrolled 152 patients with gastrointestinal tumors or breast cancer who were treated with oral capecitabine. Participants were randomly assigned to receive urea cream or the new ointment, which has been available on the German market since 2011.

Results showed that 30.9% of patients who received the new ointment experienced hand-foot syndrome compared with 22.4% in the urea cream group (OR = 2.37; P=0.02).

Researchers found that time to any-grade hand-foot syndrome was significantly longer in the urea cream arm than the new ointment arm (P=0.03). The study also demonstrated that skin-related quality of life was significantly worse in the new ointment group than the urea group at the end of study treatment.