The platinum-based drugs cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin are regularly prescribed in the treatment of cancer and while they are effective, their use is limited by their severe, dose-limiting side effects (also referred to as adverse effects/events). In total, a cancer patient can experience any combination of around 40 specific side effects. The dose-limiting side effect for cisplatin is nephrotoxicity, for carboplatin it is myelosuppression, and for oxaliplatin it is neurotoxicity. Other common side effects include anaphylaxis, cytopenias (including leukopenia and neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, and anaemia), hepatotoxicity, ototoxicity, cardiotoxicity, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, mucositis, stomatitis, pain, alopecia, anorexia, cachexia, and asthenia. The side effects may require patients to be prescribed dose reductions in their platinum drugs of between 25 and 100%. Furthermore, patients require extensive monitoring of their biochemistries, kidney and liver function, and depending on the drug, hearing tests. Finally, patients are commonly co-prescribed additional non-chemotherapy based drugs to treat the side effects which can include antiemetics, antibiotics and myeloid growth factors, mannitol, propafenone, saline hyperhydration, magnesium supplements, monoclonal antibody cytokine blockers, and antioxidants.

Correction for 'The side effects of platinum-based chemotherapy drugs: a review for chemists' by Rabbab Oun et al., Dalton Trans., 2018, 47, 6645-6653.

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Background: Electrophoretic quantification of paraproteins varies between laboratories, particularly for paraproteins that comigrate with normal beta-region proteins. To reduce inter-laboratory variability, new guidelines for standardised reporting recommend quantitating beta-migrating paraproteins with the entire beta-region. 1 For laboratories currently quantitating beta-1 and beta-2 migrating paraproteins separately, paraprotein estimations are likely to increase on total beta-quantification, but the magnitude of this has not been assessed. Aim: To compare measurement of beta-migrating paraproteins using total beta-quantification to that of beta-1 or beta-2 quantification. Methods: Beta-migrating paraproteins were re-quantitated retrospectively in 6 months of capillary zone electrophoresis data. Results: Of 2054 paraproteins examined, 175 (8.5%) migrated in the beta-region. When re-quantitated with the total betaregion, the median increase in beta-1 and beta-2 migrating paraprotein concentration was 2.0 g/L (IQR 1.6,2.5) and 4.2 g/ L (IQR 3.4,4.9) respectively. For small paraproteins, this represented two-to three-fold increases in paraprotein concentration. Discussion: Adoption of total beta-quantification may significantly increase estimated paraprotein concentrations. This is most conspicuous for bands migrating in the beta-2 region but also significant for beta-1 migrating proteins. For both, impact is greatest with small paraproteins. Such increases may be interpreted as progression of disease and trigger further investigations.