Paclitaxel in anthracycline-treated breast cancer patients.

Between May 1995 and July 1997, paclitaxel (TX) (175 mg/m2 by 3 h i. v. infusion every 21 days) was administered to 70 consecutive patients (median age: 57 years) previously treated with the FEC regimen (cyclophosphamide and 5-fluorouracil, 600 mg/m2, plus epirubicin, 60 or 120 mg/m2) as an adjuvant setting or as a first-line therapy for metastatic disease. Sixty-eight patients were evaluable for response, while two died early. Patients received a median of 4.7 (3-12 course) of TX for a total of 211 courses. The overall response and stable disease rate was 54% in 11 patients, who relapsed following adjuvant FEC, and 60% in 57 patients, who received FEC as first treatment for their metastatic disease. No complete respose was obtained. In patients pretreated for metastatic disease, response and stable disease rates were similar irrespective of previous response to FEC. Main hematologic toxicity of TX was of short duration, grade II/III leukopenia (86% of patients) and non-hematologic toxicity was grade II/III peripheral neuropathy, related to the cumulative dose of TX. At this schedule, TX offers a significant rate of partial responses or disease stabilization in patients with metastatic breast cancer previously treated with FEC.

Recovery of response to adriamycin and cyclophosphamide by lonidamine in previously treated metastatic breast-cancer patients.

Thirty-one patients with metastatic breast cancer not responding or progressing after initial response to adriamycin + cyclophosphamide (AC) treatment entered a phase 11 study with oral lonidamine in association to AC. Objective clinical responses were observed in 10 patients (32%) and consisted of 1 complete + 9 partial remissions. Disease stability and progression were observed in 8 and 13 cases, respectively. These results were obtained with a marginal toxicity in addition to that already reported for AC therapy, the main additional side effect being myalgia, which was easily manageable in most cases.

[3 years of "new developments" in pharmacotherapy. An update which is also a proposal for participative experimentation]. / Tre anni di "novità" in farmaco-terapia. Un aggiornamento, che è anche una proposta di sperimentazione partecipativa.

The analysis of the contents of key national and international drug bulletins provides a comprehensive overview of what has been produced worldwide in the field of pharmacology and therapeutics over the last few years after the last publication in R d 1). The work presented, tries to avoid the risk of being a purely descriptive listing of true and false "new" information, and may be seen as an "experiment of information transfer": the available data are presented and summarised from various complementary points of view, to suggest also a methodology of permanent education, for which instruments are also proposed. Further, the text is tentatively proposed as an experiment of communication between nurses and pharmacists, to stimulate their dialogue and interaction both with respect to the use of drug literature and to the evaluation of daily needs of information in routine hospital practice.

[Randomized study of the antiemetic efficacy of alizapride versus alizapride + dexamethasone]. / Studio randomizzato sull'efficacia antiemetica dell'alizapride versus alizapride + desametasone.

We made a study on patients suffering from neoplasias treated with cisplatinum to compare antiemetic efficacy of alizapride or associated to dexamethasone. We divided patients in two groups. We somministred alizapride alone to the first group and alizapride plus dexamethasone to the second one. We evaluated presence or absence of emesis, its intensity and eventual tossic effects due to the drugs through an autocompilative questionnaire given to the patients. Our results didn't show important statistical differences between the two groups, though association with dexamethasone gets better emesis control. Alizapride anyway, didn't present important collateral effects, particularly extrapyramidal ones.