Conditions: Ovarian Carcinoma
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 60
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This randomized phase II trial is studying how well levonorgestrel works in preventing ovarian cancer in patients at high risk for ovarian cancer. Chemoprevention is the use of certain drugs to keep cancer from forming. The use of levonorgestrel may prevent ovarian cancer.

Detailed description:
PRIMARY OBJECTIVES:

I. Determine the impact of levonorgestrel on the relative frequency of apoptosis in the ovarian epithelium of patients at high risk for ovarian cancer.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVES:

I. Estimate the impact of this drug on proliferation and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) expression in the ovarian epithelium of these patients.

II. Assess the safety of this drug in these patients.

OUTLINE: This is a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study. Patients are stratified according to menopausal status (premenopausal vs postmenopausal). Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 treatment arms.

ARM I: Patients receive oral levonorgestrel once daily.

ARM II: Patients receive oral placebo once daily.

In both arms, treatment continues for 4-6 weeks in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity, including on the day of surgery. Patients then undergo prophylactic salpingo-oophorectomy. After completion of study therapy, patients are followed at 1 year.

NOTE: \* Patients who are unable to have surgery completed during the expected 4-6 weeks, may continue levonorgestrel or placebo for a time period no \> 5 months. Patients unable to undergo surgery within 5 months are removed from the study.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients receive oral levonorgestrel once daily. arm 2: Patients receive oral placebo once daily.

Interventions: intervention 1: Laboratory Biomarker Analysis intervention 2: Levonorgestrel intervention 3: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Correlative studies intervention 2: Given orally intervention 3: Given orally

Protocol document: