Twenty-five evaluable patients with advanced or recurrent epithelial ovarian carcinoma that was no longer controllable with surgery, radiation therapy, and/or chemotherapy were treated with leuprolide acetate, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist, 1 mg subcutaneously daily. One partial response (4%) was observed among the 25 patients. The upper 95% confidence bound of the response rate is 17.6%. Fifteen patients (60%) exhibited stable disease for at least 8 weeks, and 9 patients (36%) developed progressive cancer while receiving treatment. The regimen was well tolerated with no patient experiencing life-threatening toxicity. Mild toxicities included leukopenia in 2 patients (8%), thrombocytopenia in 2 patients (8%), gastrointestinal toxicity in 5 patients (20%), anemia in 4 patients (16%), hot flashes in 1 patient (4%), and facial swelling in 1 patient (4%). Thus, leuprolide acetate was well tolerated but has insignificant activity in treating patients with chemotherapy-refractory ovarian adenocarcinoma.