Olanzapine for Anorexia in Patients With Incurable Cancer and Cachexia (OlAnCa): A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Clinical Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Pharmacologic options for managing anorexia in cancer cachexia are limited. This trial aimed to evaluate the efficacy of olanzapine in alleviating anorexia in patients with incurable cancer and cachexia. METHODS: This double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial included adult patients with incurable cancer and cachexia, scoring ≥4 on the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) anorexia item (ESAS-Anorexia) and <4 on the ESAS nausea item (ESAS-Nausea). A total of 164 patients were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive either placebo (n=82) or olanzapine 5 mg daily (n=82) for 4 weeks. The primary outcome was the change in ESAS-Anorexia score after 1 week. Secondary outcomes included changes in anorexia and quality of life scores, body weight, and handgrip strength after 4 weeks. RESULTS: In the complete case analysis of the primary outcome (n=159; 97%), median [IQR] reduction in ESAS-Anorexia score after 1 week was significantly greater in the olanzapine group (-2 [-3 to 0] vs -1 [-2 to 0]; P=.003). The significance continued at 2 weeks (-2 [-4 to -1] vs -1 [-2 to 0]; P=.039). After 4 weeks, significantly more patients in the olanzapine group experienced >5% weight gain (14% vs 0%; P=.008), and the mean [SD] improvement in Functional Assessment of Anorexia/Cachexia Therapy - Anorexia/Cachexia Subscale score was higher (+2.7 [7.4] vs -0.04 [7]; P=.043). The mean [SD] decline in handgrip strength was greater with olanzapine and was significant in per-protocol analysis (-2.8 [4.9] kg vs -0.3 [4.1] kg; P=.027). Anxiety, insomnia, and nausea (P=.016, P=.034, and P=.039, respectively) were significantly less frequent with olanzapine, whereas grade ≥3 anemia and leukopenia were more frequent (P=.018 and P=.041, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: A short course of olanzapine 5 mg daily significantly reduces anorexia in patients with incurable cancer and cachexia. Further studies are needed to evaluate its long-term safety and efficacy in cancer cachexia.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".