Impact of perioperative chemotherapy on survival in patients with advanced primary urethral cancer: results of the international collaboration on primary urethral carcinoma

This is the first series that suggests a prognostic benefit of neoadjuvant treatment in a consecutive series of patients who underwent perioperative chemotherapy plus surgery for advanced primary urethral carcinoma. Further studies should yield a better understanding of how perioperative chemotherapy exerts a positive effect on survival in order to selectively advocate its use in advanced primary urethral carcinom

A prospective randomised trial to study the role of levamisole and interferon alfa in an adjuvant therapy with 5-FU for stage III colon cancer

The purpose of this trial was to examine the efficacy of the addition of levamisole (LEV) or interferon alfa (IFN) to an adjuvant chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) in patients with stage III colon cancer. According to a 2 × 2 factorial study design, 598 patients were randomly assigned to one of four adjuvant treatment arms. Patients in arm one received 5-FU weekly for 1 year, patients in arm two 5-FU plus LEV, in arm three 5-FU plus IFN and patients in arm four 5-FU, LEV and IFN. The relative risk of relapse and the relative risk of death were significantly higher for patients treated with LEV compared with those without LEV treatment (HR 1.452, 95% CI 1.135–1.856, P=0.0028; HR 1.506, 95% CI 1.150–1.973, P=0.0027, respectively). No significant impact on survival was observed for therapy with IFN in the univariate analysis. The addition of LEV to adjuvant 5-FU significantly worsened the prognosis of patients with stage III colon cancer. Interferon alfa had no significant influence on survival when combined with adjuvant 5-FU, but increased the toxicity of therapy substantially