Conditions: Advanced Cancer
Keywords: nausea vomiting olanzapine
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 30
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of olanzapine for the treatment of cancer patients with chronic nausea and/or vomiting unrelated to chemotherapy or radiation in a randomized placebo-controlled pilot trial.

Detailed description:
Patients with advanced cancer experience a variety of physical and psychosocial symptoms that significantly affect the patients' quality of life. Chronic nausea is a particularly distressing symptom present in \>60% of patients with advanced cancer. A number of palliative care studies have evaluated treatments of nausea with limited success. Olanzapine with its unique formulation and decreased drug interactions compared to many other drugs appears to be a reasonable candidate for further evaluation. Olanzapine has significant potential for use in the prevention and treatment of nausea in a palliative care setting with a once-daily dosing.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients will receive 5 mg olanzapine orally for 1 to 7 days daily. arm 2: Patients will receive a placebo orally for 1 to 7 days daily.

Interventions: intervention 1: Olanzapine intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Olanzapine is used as an anti-emetic. intervention 2: The placebo is a non-anti-emetic.

Protocol document:
Prot_SAP_000.pdf: