scholarly journals Preclinical and Clinical Effects of Mistletoe against Breast Cancer

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsen Marvibaigi ◽  
Eko Supriyanto ◽  
Neda Amini ◽  
Fadzilah Adibah Abdul Majid ◽  
Saravana Kumar Jaganathan
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Antitumor Activity ◽  
Cancer Patients ◽  
Remission Rate ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Herbal Medicines ◽  
Clinical Effects ◽  
Breast Cancer Patients ◽  
Mistletoe Extract

Breast cancer is among the most frequent types of cancer in women worldwide. Current conventional treatment options are accompanied by side effects. Mistletoe is amongst the important herbal medicines traditionally used as complementary remedies. An increasing number of studies have reported anticancer activity of mistletoe extracts on breast cancer cells and animal models. Some recent evidence suggests that cytotoxic activity of mistletoe may be mediated through different mechanisms. These findings provide a good base for clinical trials. Various studies on mistletoe therapy for breast cancer patients revealed similar findings concerning possible benefits on survival time, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), remission rate, and alleviating adverse reactions to conventional therapy. This review provides an overview of the recent findings on preclinical experiments and clinical trials of mistletoe for its cytotoxic and antitumor activity and its effect on HRQoL in breast cancer patients. Moreover, studies investigating molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying antitumor activity of mistletoe are discussed in this paper. The analyzed trials provided evidence that there might be a combination of pharmacological and motivational aspects mediated by the mistletoe extract application which may contribute to the clinical benefit and positive outcome such as improved HRQoL and self-regulation in breast cancer patients.

Breast Cancer in the Elderly

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (14) ◽  
pp. 1882-1890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Crivellari ◽  
Matti Aapro ◽  
Robert Leonard ◽  
Gunter von Minckwitz ◽  
Etienne Brain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Cancer Patients ◽  
Disease Free Survival ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Breast Cancer Patients ◽  
Younger Women ◽  
Based Medicine

Screening and adjuvant postoperative therapies have increased survival among women with breast cancer. These tools are seldom applied in elderly patients, although the usually reported incidence of breast cancer is close to 50% in women 65 years or older, reaching 47% after 70 years in the updated Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Elderly breast cancer patients, even if in good medical health, were frequently excluded from adjuvant clinical trials. Women age 70 years who are fit actually have a median life expectancy of 15.5 years, ie, half of them will live much longer and will remain exposed for enough time to the potentially preventable risks of a relapse and specific death. In the last few years, a new concern about this issue has developed. Treatment now faces two major end points, as in younger women: to improve disease-free survival in the early stages, and to palliate symptoms in advanced disease. However, in both settings, the absolute benefit of treatment is critical because protecting quality of life and all its related aspects (especially functional status and independence), is crucial in older persons who have more limited life expectancy. Furthermore, the new hormonal compounds (aromatase inhibitors) and chemotherapeutic drugs (capecitabine, liposomal doxorubicin), are potentially less toxic than and equally as effective as older more established therapies. These new treatments bring new challenges including higher cost, and defining their benefit in elderly breast cancer must include an analysis of the cost/benefit ratio. These issues emphasize the urgent need to develop and support clinical trials for this older population of breast cancer patients both in the adjuvant and metastatic settings, a move that will take us from a prejudiced, age-based medicine to an evidence-based medicine.

Herbal medicines may not be innocuous for breast cancer patients

2004 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. S384-S385
Author(s):  
S ROCKWELL ◽  
O FAJOLU ◽  
Y LIU ◽  
T PAUL ◽  
S HIGGINS
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Cancer Patients ◽  
Herbal Medicines ◽  
Breast Cancer Patients

scholarly journals Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis of Survival and Psychosomatic Self-Regulation from Published Prospective Controlled Cohort Studies for Long-Term Therapy of Breast Cancer Patients with a Mistletoe Preparation (Iscador)

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Ziegler ◽  
Ronald Grossarth-Maticek
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Overall Survival ◽  
Cancer Patients ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Breast Cancer Patients ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Randomized Studies ◽  
Combined Data

Mistletoe preparations such as Iscador are in common use as complementary/anthroposophic medications for many cancer indications, particularly for solid cancers. The efficacy is still discussed controversially. This paper presents an individual patient data meta-analysis of all published prospective matched-pair studies with breast cancer patients concerned with long-term application of a complementary/anthroposophic therapy with the mistletoe preparation Iscador. Six sets of data were available for individual patient meta-analysis of breast cancer patients, matched according to prognostic factors into pairs with and without mistletoe (Iscador) therapy. The main outcome measures were overall survival and psychosomatic self-regulation. Overall survival was almost significant in favor of the Iscador group in the combined data set of the randomized studies: estimate of the hazard ratio with 95% confidence interval 0.59 (0.34, 1.02). Overall survival was highly significant in the combined data set of the non-randomized studies: 0.43 (0.34, 0.56). In the combined analysis of the randomized studies, improvement of psychosomatic self-regulation, as a measure of autonomous coping with the disease, was highly significant in favor of the Iscador group: estimate of the median difference 0.45 (0.15, 0.80),P= 0.0051. The analyzed studies show that therapy with Iscador might prolong overall survival and improve psychosomatic self-regulation of breast cancer patients.

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