Aflibercept for Gastrointestinal Bleeding in Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia: A Case Report.
Bernat VillanuevaAdriana IriarteRaquel Torres-IglesiasMiriam Muñoz BolañoPau CerdàAntoni Riera-MestrePublished in: Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) (2023)
Herein, we present the first described hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) patient treated with aflibercept for severe GI involvement after tachyphylaxis to bevacizumab, with promising results. HHT is a rare genetic disease characterized by systemic vascular malformations. Gastrointestinal telangiectasia is one of the major involvements that can produce chronic severe iron-deficiency anemia. Nowadays, support treatment with iron replacement therapy, red blood cell transfusions, and antiangiogenic drugs-mainly bevacizumab, a monoclonal antibody against vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-are the main therapeutic options for this complication. The evidence of alternative drugs in patients with failure to this approach, such as tachyphylaxis to bevacizumab, is scarce. Aflibercept is a VEGF inhibitor with antiangiogenic properties approved for the treatment of different types of cancer and ocular neovascularization diseases.
Keyphrases
- vascular endothelial growth factor
- iron deficiency
- replacement therapy
- monoclonal antibody
- red blood cell
- endothelial cells
- drug induced
- metastatic colorectal cancer
- smoking cessation
- case report
- age related macular degeneration
- papillary thyroid
- genome wide
- young adults
- copy number
- lymph node metastasis
- drug administration
- newly diagnosed