Efficacy of La Roche-Posay products in the treatment of skin toxicity induced by antitumor therapy: a prospective study

Objective: Evaluation of the dynamics of the severity of skin xerosis, fissuring, and eczematization symptoms in cancer patients treated with La Roche-Posay emollients over a 4-week period.

Materials and methods: This prospective study included 27 patients (mean age 55.59 ± 8.69 years; 59.3% men) with various oncological diseases who developed skin toxicity during antitumor therapy. Symptom severity (xerosis, fissures, eczematization) was assessed using a visual analog scale (VAS) before therapy and after 2 and 4 weeks. Patients used La Roche-Posay Lipikar baume AP+M and La Roche-Posay Cicaplast B5+ products for 4 weeks. A repeated-measures one-way single factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post-hoc pairwise comparisons using the Student’s t-test and Holm’s correction was used to assess the statistical significance of changes in the parameters.

Results: A statistically significant reduction in VAS scores was observed for all assessed symptoms (p<0.001). The mean VAS score for xerosis decreased from 8.07±1.04 to 1.37±0.49, the VAS score for fissures decreased from 8.04±0.98 to 1.44±0.51, and the VAS score for eczematization decreased from 8.41±1.12 to 1.37±0.49. Pairwise comparisons between all timepoints also showed statistically significant differences (p<0.001).

Conclusion: The use of La Roche-Posay moisturizing and restorative products has demonstrated high efficacy in the treatment of skin toxicity, leading to a significant and clinically significant reduction in the manifestations of xerosis, fissures, and eczematization in cancer patients undergoing antitumor treatment.