Study: Giving 2 chemo drugs reduces cancer reccurrence

Cox News Service

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A new study has shown for the first time that giving two chemotherapy drugs to women with advanced endometrial cancer after surgery reduced the risk of recurrence by 29 percent and extended survival by 32 percent, compared with women who received whole abdominal irradiation.

The findings could improve the care for the 15 percent to 20 percent of patients with endometrial cancer who have advanced disease. The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that 40,880 women will be diagnosed with the disease in 2005 and 7,310 will die.

"For the first time, adjuvant chemotherapy has been shown to extend survival in patients with advanced endometrial cancer," said the study's lead author, Dr. Marcus E. Randall, director of the Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.

Researchers from the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) compared the rate of recurrence and overall survival between 194 women with advanced endometrial cancer who received chemotherapy with the drugs doxorubicin and cisplatin over a period of five months and 202 women who received radiation therapy to the entire abdomen over about a month and a half. Patients were enrolled from 1992 until 2001. Researchers followed patients for a median of just over six years and used a statistical model to estimate five-year recurrence and survival rates.

After five years, half of patients who received chemotherapy were estimated to be free of disease, compared with 38 percent of those who received whole abdominal irradiation.

Carolyn Susman writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: carolyn-susmanpbpost.com