A study looking at a way of working out who may have sickness as a side effect of chemotherapy - DRIP

Please note this trial is no longer recruiting patients.

This study is looking into developing a tool that can tell doctors who may have sickness as a side effect of chemotherapy.

Many chemotherapy drugs can make you feel or be sick. But this varies from person to person. Before you have chemotherapy, doctors are not able to tell if you will have sickness as a side effect or how bad it may be. If they knew this, they could give you the anti sickness medicine that is best for you, before treatment.

The aims of this study are to

Develop a tool that doctors can use to tell who may have sickness as a side effect of chemotherapy and how bad it may be
To test this tool

Recruitment

Start 01/10/2009

End 30/11/2010

Phase

Other

Who can enter

You can enter this trial if you

Have a solid tumour (not leukaemia or lymphoma)
Are about to start chemotherapy
Are at least 17 years old

You cannot enter this trial if you have had chemotherapy before.

Trial design

This trial will recruit 270 people in 2 parts. The first part will recruit 170 people and the second part will recruit 100 people.

In the first part, the researchers want to find out what might affect how sick you are when having chemotherapy.

In the second part, the researchers want to put to the test what they found out in the first part.

Everyone taking part in this trial will fill in 3 forms before starting chemotherapy. These will ask how you are feeling and about things that might make you feel sick when having chemotherapy.

The type of questions will be

About the times you have been, or felt like being, sick before (for example, during pregnancy, travel sickness or if certain foods made you feel sick)
About the symptoms of your cancer
If you think chemotherapy will make you sick
About how worried you feel

You usually have chemotherapy as several cycles of treatment. This means that you have a drug or drugs over a short period of time. Then there is a gap before your next treatment starts and the whole process is repeated. In this study, everyone will also fill in a questionnaire after their first, second and third cycles of chemotherapy.

This questionnaire will ask if you have felt sick or been sick after having chemotherapy. You take the questionnaire home and one of the research team will telephone you to tell you when to fill it in. You will have a pre paid envelope to return the questionnaire.

Hospital visits

There are no extra hospital visits when taking part in this trial.

Side effects

There are no side effects from taking part in this trial. Your chemotherapy will cause side effects. But those taking part in this trial will be having a variety of chemotherapy drugs, so we cannot give specific information here. You can find out about side effects of the drugs you are having by looking them up in our cancer drugs finder.