the effect of n-acetylcysteine administration to prevent anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity in breast cancer patients

Introduction: anthracyclines are one of the classes of chemotherapy drugs that are widely used to treat many types of cancers including breast cancer. taking this class of medications has a significant relationship with cardiac dysfunction. n-acetylcysteine has antioxidant properties and may be effective in preventing cardiac dysfunctions. in this study, we investigated the effect of n-acetylcysteine in preventing cardiotoxicity in breast cancer patients receiving anthracycline. methods: a total of 60 breast cancer patients who underwent chemotherapy with anthracyclines were enrolled in the present case-control study and divided into two groups. the case group received 600 mg of n-acetylcysteine per day adjacent to chemotherapy; while the control group did not receive this medication. one month after the last chemotherapy session, troponin i was measured as a predictor of cardiotoxicity. results: troponin i was positive in one patient in the case group compared with 3 patients in the control group without any significant difference among groups (p> 0.05) however, the respective mean±sd level of troponin i was 0.120±0.039 and 0.192±0.063 in the case and control groups with a statistically significant difference among groups (p <0.001). conclusions: administration of 600 mg n-acetylcysteine per day during the anthracyclinebased chemotherapy protocol in breast cancer patients may reduce the mean troponin i levels which can be a prediction of reduced anthracyclines cardiotoxicity.