Novel longitudinal Multiple Overall Toxicity (MOTox) score to quantify adverse events experienced by patients during chemotherapy treatment: a retrospective analysis of the MRC BO06 trial in osteosarcoma

Objectives This study aims at exploring and quantifying multiple types of adverse events (AEs) experienced by patients during cancer treatment. A novel longitudinal score to evaluate the Multiple Overall Toxicity (MOTox) burden is proposed. The MOTox approach investigates the personalised evolution of high overall toxicity (high-MOTox) during the treatment.

Design Retrospective analysis of the MRC-BO06/EORTC-80931 randomised controlled trial for osteosarcoma.

Setting International multicentre population-based study.

Participants A total of 377 patients with resectable high-grade osteosarcoma, who completed treatment within 180 days after randomisation without abnormal dosages (+25% higher than planned).

Interventions Patients were randomised to six cycles of conventional versus dose-intense regimens of doxorubicin and cisplatin. Non-haematological toxicity data were collected prospectively and graded according to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE).

Main outcome measures The MOTox score described the overall toxicity burden in terms of multiple toxic AEs, maximum-severity episode and cycle time-dimension. Evolution of high-MOTox was assessed through multivariable models, that investigated the impact of personalised characteristics (eg, achieved chemotherapy dose, previous AEs or biochemical factors) cycle-by-cycle.

Results A cycle-by-cycle analysis identifies different evolutions of MOTox levels during treatment, detecting differences in patients’ health. Mean MOTox values and percentages of patients with high-MOTox decreased cycle-by-cycle from 2.626 to 1.953 and from 57.8% to 36.6%, respectively. High–MOTox conditions during previous cycles were prognostic risk factors for a new occurrence (ORs range from 1.522 to 4.439), showing that patient’s history of toxicities played an important role in the evolution of overall toxicity burden during therapy. Conventional regimen may be preferred to dose-intense in terms of AEs at cycles 2–3 (p<0.05).

Conclusions The novel longitudinal method developed can be applied to any cancer studies with CTCAE-graded toxicity data. After validation in other studies, the MOTox approach may lead to improvements in healthcare assessment and treatment planning.