[First observations of the dose-dense weekly docetaxel therapy in relapsed ovarian cancer]

Weekly docetaxel therapy is a new therapeutical form of relapsed ovarian cancer. Phase I and II trials of this administration form are rare in the literature of this tumor type. The authors report on a retrospective study of this treatment.

Ten patients with recurrent epithelial ovarian carcinoma were treated by dose-dense weekly docetaxel in 57 courses. The patients received a median of 6 courses of docetaxel on day 1, 8 and 15 together with a one-week pause, in 4-week courses. The average age of the patients was 61+/-9 years. Eight patients received a docetaxel monotherapy at a dose of 40 mg/m2, in weekly administration, and two patients weekly docetaxel combination therapy with carboplatin of AUC 3, on the same days as above. The premedication used before docetaxel was the same as the one given in the 3-week protocols: the patients received treatments of 100 mg methyl-prednisolone 12 hours and half an hour before docetaxel infusion. No G4 hematological toxicities were observed. G3 and G2 leucopenia was found in 6/57=11% and 4/57=8% of treatments. No granulocyte colony stimulating factor was given. Progression-free interval (PFI) was calculated by GraphPad Prism (version 2.0) program.

Complete response was found in two patients (2/10=20%), and the patients are tumor-free 2 and 3 months after treatment. All the other patients showed tumor progression after some time of stabilization. The median progression-free interval was calculated as 2 months.

Weekly docetaxel is found to be a tolerable treatment form of relapsed ovarian cancer patients. For the evaluation of the treatment more studies are warranted.