Nonsteroidal Antiinflammatory Drugs (NSAID) Versus NSAID with Hydroxychloroquine in Treatment of Chemotherapy-related Arthropathy: Open-label Multicenter Pilot Study

Abstract

To the Editor: Various musculoskeletal manifestations can develop in a patient receiving chemotherapy for malignancy1,2,3,4,5,6. We previously examined the occurrence and prognosis of chemotherapy-related arthropathy (CRA) in 18 patients with a variety of cancers with favorable responses after a mean of 3 months’ treatment with nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAID) and disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARD)7. However, that study was limited by the small number of enrolled patients and its retrospective design. Therefore, on the basis of our previous report, a multicenter randomized open-label pilot study was designed to evaluate whether adding hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to NSAID modifies disease activity in CRA. Our study was conducted in accord with the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the institutional review boards of the hospitals involved. We obtained written informed consent from all participants. We registered our trial in the database of the Clinical Research Information Service (http://ncrc.cdc.go.kr/cris: KC160) as a randomized clinical trial (RCT). The open-labeled RCT was carried out at 7 tertiary hospitals from April 2007 to June … Address correspondence to Dr. C-H. Suh, Department of Rheumatology and BK21 Division of Cell Transformation and Restoration, Ajou University School of Medicine, San 5, Wonchon-dong, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea 443-721. E-mail: chsuh{at}ajou.ac.kr