Three of the studies are scheduled to be published in the April 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, but drafts of the articles can already be found on the web. The new recommendation does not apply to women whose cervical cancer abnormalities are detected at the earliest stages and can be treated by hysterectomy or biopsy. And women who have finished radiation treatment should not go back for chemotherapy. Each year in the U.S. about 13,000 women develop cervical cancer and 4,800 die, making it the eleventh leading cancer killer of American women. Researchers aren't sure why chemotherapy boosts the effectiveness of radiation but they have an idea.
Radiation damages the DNA found in cancer cells.
Perhaps, the drugs used in chemotherapy block the cellular repairmen from doing their job. The damaged DNA never gets fixed and the cancer cells die. All five studies showed that the chemotherapy regimen had to include at least one platinum-based drug, like cisplatin . Side effects of this treatment include nausea, vomiting and low red and white blood cell counts, but not hair loss. Ever since the introduction in the 1950s of the Pap smear test , which allows doctors to detect subtle changes in the cervix before the tissue becomes malignant, both the incidence of cervical cancer and its death rate have plummeted in industrialized countries.