Tehran University Medical Journal

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 !mso]> ject classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui> Background: Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death among all gynecologic cancers in developed countries. The standard treatment for advanced ovarian cancer consists of cytoreductive surgery associated with a platinum/paclitaxel-based chemotherapy. Over than 50% of patients with advanced ovarian cancer will develop recurrent disease. For those patients who have recurrence of disease at least six months after initial therapy, the paclitaxel- platinum combination has been shown to be a superior treatment to platinum monotherapy. However, many patients develop clinically relevant neurotoxicity, frequently resulting in treatment discontinuation. The efficacy and safety of an alternative regimen that dose not show significant neurotoxicity were evaluated by comparing gemcitabin- carboplatin with carboplatin in platinum sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer patients in a Gynecologic Cancer InterGroup trial in Canada and European Organization for research and treatment of Cancer Gynecological Cancer Group. But this study was not done in Iran.
Methods: We performed a study with escalating doses of gemcitabin combined with carboplatin in 21 patients. All patients who were treated in Vali-Asr hospital between 2003- 2005 evaluated. Gemcitabin with dose of 800mg/m² was given on days 1, 8 and 15 followed by one week rest period for a 28 day cycle. Combine with carboplatin with AUC 4 given on day 2. All patients with surgically resected, histologically confirmed epithelial ovarian cancer and who had failed first- line platinum chemotherapy were allocated to this study.
Results: Median age was 49 years (range 23-78 years). Median follow-up was six months (range 4-22). Total of 87 cycles of chemotherapy were administered with median number of four (range 2-6 cycles). Thrombocytopenia (grade I) and leucopenia (grade I) were seen in 4.75% and 9.52% of patients.
Conclusion: Gemcitabin and carboplatin Combination was tolerated in patients with recurrence of ovarian cancer.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Background: More than 80 years, the standard treatment of locally advanced cervical cancer was radiotherapy. However, based on several phase III randomized clinical trials in the past decade, concurrent cisplatin-based chemoradiotherapy is the current standard of treatment for this disease. Gemcitabine has potent radiosensitizing properties in preclinical and clinical trials, so it can be utilized simultaneously with radiation.
Methods:  Thirty Women with untreated invasive squamous-cell carcinoma of the cervix of stage IIB to stage IVA were enrolled in the study in Radiation Oncology department of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran from September 2009 to September 2010. Sixty mg/m² gemcitabine followed by 35 mg/m² cisplatin were concurrently administered with radiotherapy to the whole pelvic region on day one of each treatment week for five weeks One and three months after treatment, patients underwent a complete physical examination and MRI to determine the response to treatment.
Results:  The mean age of the participants was 58.13±11.83 (29-78) years. After 3 months of treatment, 73.3% had complete and 26.7% had partial response to treatment. Grade 3 anemia was seen in 10%, grade 3 thrombocytopenia in 3.3% and grade 3 leukopenia in 10% of the patients.
Conclusion: According to the positive results of this study in stage IIB, further phase II and III clinical trials are suggested to evaluate the role of chemoradiation by gemcitabine in advanced cervical cancers.