By far the most popular post on the occasional blog is the one that advises patients to be cautious about the claims made by the Chinese Fuda Hospital. If you're considering going to this hospital - or know of somebody else who is thinking of it - then please go and read that post.
You can also read about Fuda in a new book that charts the story of a teenage boy with cancer. This memoir, written by his mom, does not make for easy reading. It's a hard story that doesn't end well. But as part of the desperate attempt to save this poor boy's life, he and his father travel to China and spend weeks at Fuda Hospital. It paints a different picture of the place compared to Fuda's very slick and professional marketing.
The book is called 'For The Love of George' by Irene Kappes. It's on sale at Amazon in paperback or Kindle format. More details can be had here:
http://newparadigmpublishing.co.uk/for-the-love-of-george/
Friday 7 November 2014
Thursday 20 March 2014
Glutamine - Clinical Results
Steve Martin, the author of the original Grouppe Kurosawa blog (i.e. not this one!), was a tireless advocate of methyl jasmonate and oral glutamine supplementation as treatments for cancer. Over the years he made a lot of information known about those substances with really useful links back to the source references for those people who wanted to follow up. While there's been very little work done on methyl jasmonate outside of the lab, the same is not the case for glutamine.
Glutamine is an amino acid and is essential not just for normal cells to function but for tumour cells too. In fact there is plenty of evidence to suggest that along with glucose, glutamine is one of the preferred fuels for tumour growth and progression. So why suggest taking it? Because, as Steve surmised based on the data that was available to him then, it also has several protective effects and may therefore be of more benefit to the body than to the tumours.
Glutamine has been investigated and used clinically to fight many of the side effects from cancer treatments. And it's still being used this way, even though there is this fear that it's directly feeding tumours. A recent paper in the journal BMC Cancer reports back on a trial in advanced lung cancer patients who were given oral glutamine supplementation.
The result? Here's what the conclusion has to say:
There was a small improvement in overall survival reported, but it was a small trial and there's no way to know whether that result was a fluke or something more concrete. In any case, the trial shows that high-dose glutamine in these patients certainly did not make matters worse by feeding the tumours, and may indeed even helped by reducing side effects and the need to stop treatment because of it.
The full paper can be found here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/12/502
Please note, that this is not a randomised controlled trial, so there's a potential bias in the results, but it is at least suggestion and evidence that oral glutamine may not be as bad as a simple reading might suggest.
Glutamine is an amino acid and is essential not just for normal cells to function but for tumour cells too. In fact there is plenty of evidence to suggest that along with glucose, glutamine is one of the preferred fuels for tumour growth and progression. So why suggest taking it? Because, as Steve surmised based on the data that was available to him then, it also has several protective effects and may therefore be of more benefit to the body than to the tumours.
Glutamine has been investigated and used clinically to fight many of the side effects from cancer treatments. And it's still being used this way, even though there is this fear that it's directly feeding tumours. A recent paper in the journal BMC Cancer reports back on a trial in advanced lung cancer patients who were given oral glutamine supplementation.
The result? Here's what the conclusion has to say:
In our study, supplementation with Gln during C-CRT had no detectable negative impact on tumor control and survival outcomes in patients with Stage IIIB NSCLC. Furthermore, Gln appeared to have a beneficial effect with respect to prevention of weight loss and unplanned treatment delays, and reduced the severity and incidence of acute- and late-RIE (radiation induced esophagitis.
There was a small improvement in overall survival reported, but it was a small trial and there's no way to know whether that result was a fluke or something more concrete. In any case, the trial shows that high-dose glutamine in these patients certainly did not make matters worse by feeding the tumours, and may indeed even helped by reducing side effects and the need to stop treatment because of it.
The full paper can be found here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/12/502
Please note, that this is not a randomised controlled trial, so there's a potential bias in the results, but it is at least suggestion and evidence that oral glutamine may not be as bad as a simple reading might suggest.
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