should be apprised of the potential hazard to a fetus. Women of childbearing potential should be advised to avoid becoming pregnant during therapy with TEMODAR.
8.3 Nursing Mothers
It is not known whether this drug is excreted in human milk. Because many drugs are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants and tumorigenicity shown for temozolomide in animal studies, a decision should be made whether to discontinue nursing or to discontinue the drug, taking into account the importance of the drug to the mother from TEMODAR.
8.4 Pediatric Use
Safety and effectiveness in pediatric patients have not been established. TEMODAR Capsules have been studied in 2 open-label studies in pediatric patients (aged 3–18 years) at a dose of 160 to 200 mg/m2 daily for 5 days every 28 days. In one trial, 29 patients with recurrent brain stem glioma and 34 patients with recurrent high grade astrocytoma were enrolled. All patients had recurrence following surgery and radiation therapy, while 31% also had disease progression following chemotherapy. In a second study conducted by the Children's Oncology Group (COG), 122 patients were enrolled, including patients with medulloblastoma/PNET (29), high grade astrocytoma (23), low grade astrocytoma (22), brain stem glioma (16), ependymoma (14), other CNS tumors (9), and non-CNS tumors (9). The TEMODAR toxicity profile in pediatric patients is similar to adults. Table 10 shows the adverse reactions in 122 children in the COG study.
TABLE 10: Adverse Reactions Reported in the Pediatric Cooperative Group Trial (≥10%) No. (%) of TEMODAR Patients
(N=122)*
Body System/Organ Class All Reactions Grade 3/4
Adverse Reaction
*
These various tumors included the following: PNET-medulloblastoma, glioblastoma, low grade astrocytoma, brain stem tumor, ependymoma, mixed glioma, oligodendroglioma, neuroblastoma, Ewing's sarcoma, pineoblastoma, alveolar soft part sarcoma, neurofibrosarcoma, optic glioma, and osteosarcoma.
Subjects Reporting an AE 107 (88) 69 (57)
Body as a Whole
Central and Peripheral Nervous System
Central cerebral CNS cortex 22 (18) 13 (11)
Gastrointestinal System
Nausea 56 (46) 5 (4)
Vomiting 62 (51) 4 (3)
Platelet, Bleeding and Clotting
Thrombocytopenia 71 (58) 31 (25)
Red Blood Cell Disorders
Decreased Hemoglobin 62 (51) 7 (6)
White Cell and RES Disorders
Decreased WBC 71 (58) 21 (17)
Lymphopenia 73 (60) 48 (39)
Neutropenia 62 (51) 24 (20)
8.5 Geriatric Use
Clinical studies of temozolomide did not include sufficient numbers of subjects aged 65 and over to determine whether they responded differently from younger subjects. Other reported clinical experience has not identified differences in responses between the elderly and younger patients. In general, dose selection for an elderly patient should be cautious, reflecting the greater frequency of decreased hepatic, renal, or cardiac function, and of concomitant disease or other drug therapy.
In the anaplastic astrocytoma study population, patients 70 years of age or older had a higher incidence of Grade 4 neutropenia and Grade 4 thrombocytopenia (2/8; 25%, P=0.31 and 2/10; 20%, P=0.09, respectively) in the first cycle of therapy than patients under 70 years of a |
