A new type of intensive chemotherapy is proving highly effective
in treating women critically ill with ovarian cancer, scientists
announced today.
The pioneering treatment is successful in 80% of patients whose
first-line chemotherapy had failed, compared to rates of less than
15% under current therapies.
The results, published in the British Journal of Cancer, will provide
fresh hope to the 7,000 women who are diagnosed with ovarian cancer
each year in the UK.
At the moment they have a survival rate of just 29% after five
years.
The Dutch study involved 98 women with ovarian cancer whose first-line
chemotherapy had initially been successful, but who had later relapsed.
Researchers divided the women into three groups depending on the
severity of their cancer and treated them with an intensive regime
of cisplatin and another drug called etoposide.
The response rates of the two groups of women who were least ill
to the new treatment were 92% and 91%. This compares to a response
of 50% and 20% to 30% with standard therapies.
Among the group of women who were most seriously ill, 46% responded
to treatment, compared with less than 15% for current therapies.
Overall, 80% of the women's tumours shrank and an unprecedented
43% showed a complete response, with all signs of their cancers
disappearing.
Cisplatin and etoposide are already used in chemotherapy regimes
for many cancers, but the new treatment used the drugs much more
intensively than usual.
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