Unusual Pattern of Whitening of Eyebrows Following Sunitinib Therapy: A Case Report with Brief Review of Literature

Sunitinib is a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor inhibitor which has shown high activity in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) patients and is now widely used for the same. It is generally well tolerated, but sometimes, it exhibits a distinct pattern of novel side effects that require monitoring and management. Important known side effect of sunitinib includes fatigue, diarrhea, anorexia, skin toxicity, and hypertension which need special mention. Considering its effectiveness in first-line setting in mRCC and paucity of other good options, utmost efforts are made to continue it with identification of side effects which may require only slight dose modification or no dose alteration. We report here a 38-year-old male who was diagnosed as a case of mRCC and started on sunitinib at the diagnosis and developed whitish discoloration of eyebrows and body hairs after 3 months of starting sunitinib. In view of good overall response to treatment and no other significant toxicity, sunitinib was continued with good tolerability.

International journal of trichology. 0000 Jan [Epub]

Chaturbhuj R Agrawal, Vineet Talwar, Venkata Pradeep Babu, Parveen Jain, Pankaj Goyal

Department of Medical Oncology, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, New Delhi, India.