Tranexamic acid for the treatment of advanced ovarian carcinoma

In the present phase II trial, 26 heavily pretreated patients with advanced recurrent ovarian carcinoma were treated with tranexamic acid, 4-6 g per os daily for at least 3 months. Of these 26 patients, 3 had stage IIb, 21 stage III and 2 stage IV. Histologic examination revealed serous adenocarcinoma in 13, mucinous in 3, endometroid in 4, 1 anaplastic and 5 unspecified adenocancer. Twenty of the tumors were poorly differentiated and 5 highly-moderately differentiated. No objective response was noted but all the highly-moderately differentiated tumors showed a stable disease state with a median duration of 6 months (range 4-36 months). The patients with poorly differentiated tumors had a median survival of 4 months. Most of the patients had some form of gastro-intestinal side effect. This investigation has shown that treatment with tranexamic acid was not particularly helpful in poorly differentiated cases in which modern combined chemotherapy already had failed. The effect in highly-moderately differentiated cases needs further evaluation.