Experience with Intraperitoneal Alpha-2a Interferon

Abstract

Eighteen patients affected with epithelial ovarian cancer have been treated by intraperitoneal α_2a-Interferon. The usual single dosage was 54 x 10⁶ U at weekly intervals for four times (eight times in responders): 10 h-istologically confirmed complete remissions and 3 partial remissions have been obtained; the toxicity was represented by fever in the majority of the cases, by abdominal discomfort in some cases, and by a mild transitory neurological complication in 1 case. Seventeen of 18 patients were pretreated, and 11 of 18 had only cytologic and/or microscopic disease. α_2a-Interferon has proven to be very effective and moderately toxic in microscopic peritoneal disease of ovarian epithelial cancer previously treated with extensive surgery and intravenous cytotoxic chemotherapy.

Intraperitoneal chemotherapy in the management of patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer: a critical review of the literature

“…The authors have also investigated the IP delivery of interferons (IFNs) and especially of IFN-a that can be detected in peritoneum more than 24 h after intracavitary instillation due to its large molecular size and that can cause tumor cell kill through both direct cytotoxicity and cell-mediated immune response enhancement (44)(45)(46)(47)(48) . In the early study of Berek et al (45) , weekly IFN-a at escalating doses from 5 to 50 3 10 6 U for 16 weeks achieved a surgically documented complete response in 4 (36%) and a partial response in 1 (9%) of the 11 patients with persistent epithelial ovarian at second look.…”

“…The same authors (48) delivered IP IFN-a at weekly doses 50 3 10 6 U for 12 cycles to patients with less than 0.5-cm residual disease at second look and found a surgically assessed complete and partial response in 16% and 12%, respectively, of the 25 patients with platinum-sensitive disease compared to 0% of the 21 patients with platinum-resistant disease. Nicoletto et al (46) reported ten (55%) surgically documented complete responses and three (17%) partial responses following weekly IP IFN-a at the dose of 54 3 10 6 U for four to eight cycles to 18 patients with persistent epithelial ovarian cancer mainly consisting of microscopic disease. IP IFN-a can be useful for the palliative management of recurrent ascites even in nonovarian gynecological malignancies (49) .…”