Effect of bevacizumab in treatment of children with optic pathway glioma.

Objective To investigate the effect of bevacizumab in the treatment of children with optic pathway glioma (OPG). Methods A retrospective analysis was performed for the clinical data of 30 children with OPG who underwent chemotherapy. According to whether bevacizumab was used, they were divided into conventional chemotherapy (carboplatin, vincristine and etoposide) group with 12 children and combined chemotherapy (bevacizumab, carboplatin, vincristine and etoposide) group with 18 children. The children were followed up to 6 months after chemotherapy, and the two groups were compared in terms of visual acuity and tumor size before and after chemotherapy and adverse reactions during chemotherapy. Results The combined chemotherapy group had a significantly higher proportion of children achieving tumor regression than the conventional chemotherapy group (P<0.05), while there were no significant differences between the two groups in the proportion of children with improved visual acuity or adverse reactions (P>0.05). No chemotherapy-related death was observed in either group. Conclusions Bevacizumab combined with conventional chemotherapy can effectively reduce tumor size. Compared with conventional chemotherapy, such combination does not increase adverse reactions and can thus become a new direction for the treatment of OPG in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]