Risk of severe rash in cancer patients treated with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE

We performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the incidence and risk factors of severe rash associated with the use of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).

METHODS

PubMed, EMBASE and oncology conference proceedings were searched for articles published till March 2016.

RESULTS

A total of 18,309 patients from 37 randomized controlled trials were available for the meta-analysis. The overall incidence for severe rash was 6.6% (95% CI: 5.2-8.3%) among patients receiving EGFR-TKIs. The use of EGFR-TKIs significantly increased the risk of developing severe rash (risk ratio: 7.70; 95% CI: 5.79-10.23) in cancer patients. On subgroup analysis, the increased risk of severe rash was driven predominantly by drug type (p = 0.002).

CONCLUSIONS

EGFR-TKIs significantly increase the risk of developing severe rash in cancer patients.