RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Combining more than one drug may kill more tumor cells. It is not yet known whether cisplatin is more effective when combined with paclitaxel or gemcitabine in treating cervical cancer.

PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to compare the effectiveness of cisplatin combined with paclitaxel to that of cisplatin combined with gemcitabine in treating women who have recurrent, persistent, or metastatic cervical cancer.

OBJECTIVES:

• Compare the overall survival, progression-free survival, and objective response rate (confirmed and unconfirmed, complete and partial) of patients with recurrent, persistent, or metastatic cervical cancer treated with cisplatin and paclitaxel vs cisplatin and gemcitabine.
• Compare the toxicity of these regimens in these patients.

OUTLINE: This is a randomized, multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to disease status at study entry (metastatic vs recurrent vs persistent), prior cisplatin as a radiosensitizer (yes vs no), and extent of disease (confined to pelvis vs extrapelvic disease). Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 treatment arms.

• Arm I: Patients receive paclitaxel IV over 24 hours on day 1 and cisplatin IV over 2 hours on day 2.
• Arm II:Patients receive gemcitabine IV over 30 minutes on days 1 and 8 and cisplatin IV over 2 hours on day 1.

In both arms, treatment repeats every 21 days for up to 6 courses in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

Patients are followed every 3 months for 2 years and then annually for 3 years.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 500 patients (250 per treatment arm) will be accrued for this study within 4 years.

• Drug: cisplatin
• Drug: gemcitabine hydrochloride
• Drug: paclitaxel

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Diagnosis of primary carcinoma of the cervix, meeting 1 of the following staging criteria:

  • Metastatic (stage IVB)
  • Recurrent after prior complete response to primary treatment with surgery or radiotherapy
  • Persistent after surgery or radiotherapy
• Measurable disease

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age

• Not specified

Performance status

• Zubrod 0-1

Life expectancy

• Not specified

Hematopoietic

• Not specified

Hepatic

• Not specified

Renal

• Creatinine less than upper limit of normal OR
• Creatinine clearance greater than 40 mL/min

Other

• Not pregnant or nursing
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception
• No grade 2 or greater sensory or motor neuropathy
• No other malignancy within the past 5 years except adequately treated basal cell or squamous cell skin cancer, carcinoma in situ of the cervix, or adequately treated stage I or II cancer currently in complete remission

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy

• Not specified

Chemotherapy

• More than 6 months since prior single-agent chemotherapy as a radiosensitizer

Endocrine therapy

• Not specified

Radiotherapy

• See Disease Characteristics
• At least 28 days since prior radiotherapy
• No prior radiotherapy to measurable target lesions
• No concurrent palliative radiotherapy

Surgery

• See Disease Characteristics
• Recovered from prior surgery

Other

• No prior systemic therapy
• No other concurrent antitumor therapy