Chemotherapy for cervical cancer

Adding chemotherapy to radiation treatment for cervical cancer means that 30 to 50 percent more women survive 3 to 5 years after diagnosis, according to the results of five new trials. Until now, most cervical cancer that has not spread beyond the pelvis has been treated with surgery or radiation therapy. Including chemotherapy in this regimen may lengthen the lives of thousands of women each year, the National Cancer Institute says in a rare clinical announcement mailed to physicians.

In three of the studies, each with several hundred participants, women were divided into equal groups receiving either radiation alone or radiation plus chemotherapy. The studies confirmed that women given combined treatment lived longer than did women given radiation alone. In the longest-running trial, 73 percent of the women who had been given both chemotherapy and radiation were alive after 5 years, compared with 58 percent of the women given radiation only.

In the other two studies, all the women received radiation plus chemotherapy. Half the women in each test received the anticancer drug cisplatin, while the other half received the drug hydroxyurea. Women who received cisplatin fared better

"[Adding chemotherapy] is the first fundamental advance in the treatment of cervical cancer in more than 40 years and should become the new standard of care," says Mitchell Morris of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who led one of the studies. He suggests that the anticancer drugs not only damage cancer cells directly but also sensitize them to radiation.

Three of the studies will appear in the April 15 New England Journal of Medicine; the other two will be published in different journals later this year. An estimated 3,200 cases of invasive cervical cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year.