
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990                   TAG: 9003280512
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Short

CHEMOTHERAPY NAUSEA EASED BY NEW MEDICINE

Severe nausea among people taking the common anti-cancer drug cisplatin can be largely controlled by an experimental new medicine, research released today says.

Two studies show that the medicine, called ondansetron, dramatically reduces episodes of vomiting, and nausea that persists is much less intense.

Although many cancer medicines can cause nausea, cisplatin is considered to be the worst. The bouts can be so severe that some patients refuse to continue with treatment that could cure them. Cisplatin is widely used to treat cancers of the ovaries, testicles, bladder, head and neck.

In one study, Dr. Luigi Cubeddu of the University of North Carolina, working with researchers in Venezuela, tested the medicine on 28 cancer patients. Half received ondansetron, and the rest got inactive saline injections.

Eleven of the patients getting ondansetron had two or fewer vomiting episodes in the 24 hours after their chemotherapy, and 13 of those in the comparison group had four or more.

In the other study, a French team headed by Dr. Michel Marty of St. Louis Hospital in Paris compared ondansetron with metoclopramide, another anti-nausea medicine. In a study with 76 patients, they found that ondansetron was about twice as effective.

-Associated Press

by CNB