The research team found that celecoxib did not help stop transitional cell bladder cancer coming back.
This trial was open for people to join between 2007 and 2012, and the research team published the results in 2019.
About this trial
A total of 472 people joined this trial. They were all due to have treatment for early stage transitional cell
bladder cancer.
The people taking part were put into 1 of 2 treatment groups at
random:
- 236 people had celecoxib tablets twice a day for 2 years
- 236 people had dummy (placebo) tablets twice a day for 2 years
Results
The research team looked at how many people’s cancer had started to grow again 3 years after joining the trial. They found it was similar in the two groups:
- 76 people (32%) who’d had celecoxib
- 86 people (36%) who’d had the placebo
When they looked at how many people had died, it was also similar in the two groups:
- 26 people (11%) who’d had celecoxib
- 21 people (9%) who’d had the placebo
Side effects
About 8 out of 10 people had at least one side effect, but many were mild or didn’t last long. About 3 out of 10 people in each group had a more severe side effect including tummy (abdominal) pain, difficulty sleeping and needing to pass urine more often than usual.
Some of the people taking part had heart (cardiac) related side effects such as a heart attack. These were a bit more common in the celecoxib group, affecting:
- 12 people (5%) who had celecoxib
- 4 people (2%) who had the placebo
Quality of life
The people taking part filled out questionnaires when they joined the trial, and again 6 months and 2 years later. The research team compared the results to see how their
quality of life had changed.
They found that people’s quality of life had gone down a bit in both groups, 6 months and 2 years after joining the trial. The score had gone down a little bit more for those in the celecoxib group. But this could have been chance rather than because of the different treatments.
Stopping the trial
Research teams running clinical trials regularly look at all the information gathered so far. This is to make sure the trial is running smoothly and the treatment being tested is not causing any harm to the people taking part.
In 2013, the research team running BOXIT decided to stop the trial earlier than planned because:
- the results so far showed that it was unlikely people would have any benefit from taking celecoxib
- there was a small increased risk of heart related side effects
Conclusion
The research team concluded that celecoxib did not help stop transitional bladder cancer coming back after treatment. It also caused some extra heart related side effects.
They do not recommend that celecoxib is used as a treatment for bladder cancer. But even when a trial shows a treatment isn’t useful for a particular cancer, it adds to our knowledge and understanding of cancer and how to treat it.
Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (
peer reviewed 
) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team who did the research. We have not analysed the data ourselves.