Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Chemo-radiotherapy-induced oral mucositis represents a therapeutic challenge frequently encountered in cancer patients. This side effect causes significant morbidity and may delay or interruption of treatment plan, cyclo-oxygenase 2 (COX2) is an inducible enzyme primarily expressed in inflamed and tumoral tissues. COX-2 inhibitors have shown promise to reduce chemoradiation induce toxicities. We conducted a phase III, randomized double blind clinical trial to evaluate the toxicity and efficacy of celecoxib, a selective COX2 inhibitor, administered concurrently with chemoradiation for locally advanced head and neck cancer. Here in we report the first report about the role of COX-2 inhibitor in acute toxicicities.

Methods: Patients with stage III/IV (locally advance) head and neck carcinoma who referred to department of radiation-oncology were eligible. Patients were treated with chemotherapy with cisplatin concurrently with radiation (60-70Gy). Celecoxib (100mg qid) was started at the first day of radiotherapy and was given for a total of 8 weeks. Acute toxicities were evaluated every week by WHO scale.

Results: One hundred twenty two patients were enrolled into the study, (61 patients for each group). In repeated mesurment analysis of variance there is a significant difference in the time of onset of grade II acute toxicities between the two groups The mucositis, dysphagia, epidermitis and oral pain score changed significantly over the typical five weeks in two groups but these changes were more sever in placebo group (p=0.0001). In the analysis of the overall changes in the following laboratory parame-ters: WBC, hemoglobin and platelet showed that these parameters decreased over time in both groups without a significant difference between groups.

Conclusion: The results of these study showed that the use of a COX-2 inhibitor (celecoxib) that is a safe and inexpensive drug may reduce acute toxicities of chemoradiation specially mucositis in head and neck carcinoma.