Chemo efficacy based on treatment time of day

Bcnav,

I haven't heard of circadian rhythm as a thing in chemo, but it sounds interesting. I had four cycles of taxotere and cytoxan and three of the four of them were started between 9 and 10 in the morning. Cycle #3 was started about 3:30 in the afternoon because I wanted to attend my husband's office retirement party during their lunch hour. When I asked my MO if I could do that cycle a whole day later, she didn't seem to like that idea, saying "we really don't know what effect that would have" or something like that. But she didn't have a problem with me delaying it by 6 hours. Of course, all the side effects started happening 6 hours later, too, which sort of disrupted my expectations of how the days after a treatment were going to go. And managing expectations is a big thing with me. Just from personal experience, I think it's probably a good idea to have your treatments at the same time of day each time even if it's just for routine's sake.

Something else to consider, the two drugs I got were meant to work differently anyway. One works on the cell division stage and one on the resting stage. So I guess you'd want to know how that fits in with the whole circadian rhythm thing.

I'll be interested to see if you get any other responses.

Anne