A cure for cancer: could this be it?

[Chronos]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad this treatment worked for the patient(s) involved, I just want to point out the treatment was no walk in the park for him/them.

Those would be serious side effects for most medical treatments, but a few days of flu-like symptoms is a small price to pay to be rid of leukemia.

[brazil84]

@DWMarch

I read an article today on Yahoo News that seems remarkably free of the quackery that accompanies most supposed cancer cures. Now of course the sample size is tiny (3 people in total) and the results aren’t conclusive yet (one patient still has some cancer) but it looks very promising to me. Has anyone heard of this treatment method and if it is indeed as promising as it appears?

My recollection is that articles like this come out every year or two about some promising new treatment for cancer. So I agree that skepticism is in order. It does seem that progress is being made, however.

[Chronos]

My recollection is that articles like this come out every year or two about some promising new treatment for cancer.

Usually it’s just treatments that look promising based on animal trials, though. I think it’s rarer than a year or two that the promise is shown in human trials.

[Cheez_Whia]

@Mosier

The news is remarkable specifically because it seems to be working on lymphocytic leukemia, which is currently arguably the most difficult cancer to treat.

My husband was diagnosed with CLL two years ago, with genetic testing showing he has the slow growing type. He has not had any type of treatment for it; his oncologist sees him every 3-6 months for evaluation. Treatment with chemotherapy is only given when the condition gets bad enough to affect quality of life, but life expectancy after diagnosis is 10-25 years. It’s one of those good news/bad news things: the bad news is “You have leukemia.”, the good news is “You’ll probably live long enough to die of something else.” Our understanding until today was that there is no cure.

Wiki has a pretty readable page on it: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia - Wikipedia

[Nunavut_Boy]

@Toucanna

As if the known side-effects weren’t bad enough. Excepted from the NEJoM article:
“Clinical Response and Evaluations
Fourteen days after the first infusion, the patient began having chills and low-grade fevers associated with grade 2 fatigue. Over the next 5 days, the chills intensified, and his temperature escalated to 39.2°C (102.5°F), associated with rigors, diaphoresis, anorexia, nausea, and diarrhea. He had no respiratory or cardiac symptoms…The tumor lysis syndrome was diagnosed on day 22 after infusion…There was evidence of acute kidney injury… The patient was hospitalized and treated with fluid resuscitation and rasburicase. The uric acid level returned to the normal range within 24 hours, and the creatinine level within 3 days; he was discharged on hospital day 4. The lactate dehydrogenase level decreased gradually, becoming normal over the following month.” (Emphasis and in-line link are mine.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad this treatment worked for the patient(s) involved, I just want to point out the treatment was no walk in the park for him/them.

Known side effects of drugs on TV are oftentimes more serious than this. Really, this treatment (so far) has very minimal side effects: basically just a bad fever/immune response while the tumour is melting. Amazing. Hope this pans out and the technique can be applied to other cancers.

[Mosier]

@Nunavut_Boy

Known side effects of drugs on TV are oftentimes more serious than this. Really, this treatment (so far) has very minimal side effects: basically just a bad fever/immune response while the tumour is melting. Amazing. Hope this pans out and the technique can be applied to other cancers.

Even if it doesn’t work for other cancers, if it works for just leukemia it’ll be quite remarkable.

[MandaJo]

@brazil84

My recollection is that articles like this come out every year or two about some promising new treatment for cancer. So I agree that skepticism is in order. It does seem that progress is being made, however.

I think that a lot of times those promising new treatments are effective–it’s just the follow up details don’t get articles. We have made tremendous progress in treating cancers.