Why carry out this study?

In patients with advanced colorectal cancer after starting chemotherapy, there are few reports to investigate prevalence and onset of cancer cachexia based on the criteria of the European Palliative Care Research Collaborative.

We evaluated the incidence of cancer cachexia and the relationship between cancer cachexia and overall survival or toxicities in patients with advanced colorectal cancer after undergoing first-line systemic chemotherapy.

What was learned from this study?

Cancer cachexia appears to have an onset in approximately half of patients with advanced colorectal cancer within 24 weeks after starting first-line treatment, which likely results in poor prognosis.

In advanced colorectal cancer, severe appetite loss and fatigue tended to occur more frequently in patients with cancer cachexia than in patients without it.