Prostate cancer ranks as the second most common malignancy in males. Prostate cancer progressing on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors (PARPis) have been at the forefront of the treatment of CRPC. We aim to better characterize the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in metastatic CRPC patients treated with PARPis. A systemic review search was conducted using National Clinical Trial (NCT), PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Central Cochrane Registry. The improvement in overall survival was statistically significant, favoring PARPis (hazard ratio (HR) 0.855; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.752-0.974; p = 0.018). The improvement in progression-free survival was also statistically significant, with results favoring PARPis (HR 0.626; 95%CI 0.566-0.692; p = 0.000). In a subgroup analysis, similar results were observed where the efficacy of PARPis was evaluated in a subgroup of patients without homologous recombination repair (HRR) gene mutation, which showed improvement in PFS favoring PARPis (HR 0.747; 95%CI 0.0.637-0.877; p = 0.000). Our meta-analysis of seven RCTs showed that PARPis significantly increased PFS and OS when used with or without antihormonal agents like abiraterone or enzalutamide.
Keywords: PARP inhibitors; castrate-resistant prostate cancer; homologous recombination repair genes; overall survival; progression-free survival.