[Oral high doses of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) in the treatment of advanced phases of breast and endometrial cancer].

The results of a pilot study on the use of oral medroxyprogesterone acetate (Provera-Upjohn) at high dose in a series of 50 consecutive women with advanced breast (30 cases) and endometrial carcinoma (20 cases) are reported. Patients with progressive disease, non liable to further conventional treatments, received MPA (500 mg/day orally) for 90 days. The evaluation of results have shown only partial responses: in 9/30 (30%) of women with disseminated breast carcinoma (median duration of response 10 months, median survival 15 months), and in 6/20 (30%) of patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma (median duration of response 15 months, median survival not reached at 28 months of follow-up). Even if with a lower response rate, as compared to the results obtained with parenteral formulation, the oral MPA maintains its therapeutic effectiveness in these hormonodependent tumors: easy to handle during the long term treatments, oral MPA could be a useful alternative also for maintenance therapy.