In 2013 my mother was diagnosed with a breast cancer (stadium 4). She made 12 sessions of chemotherapy.A couple of months after, she was diagnosed with carcinomatosis leptomeningeal. At this time her prognostic was awful.
We tried a chemotherapy based on capecytabine (pills) but she did not accept it well.
Meanwhile, we performed a lot of research and we found some scientific articles about arthemisia annua compounds with a good rate of success on the treatment of some cancers (you can find these papers searching for arthemisia and Dr. Lai and Singh).
My mother was given a few weeks of life but her responsible doctor decided to take an ultimate chemotherapy based on Paclitaxel and carboplatin.
we decided to take a chance with arthemisia annua. We bought on Ebay a pure extract of arthemisia annua to be taken daily in 10-20 droplets mixed with water and she started to take these droplets simultaneously with the chemotherapy. After some research we did not find any texts claiming that Paclitaxel and carboplatin could be incompatible.
She took arthemisia annua for 14 days (20 droplets) and then she stopped. She repeated this cycle again.
We should be careful to avoid any excessive dosage so we made stoppage periods and we only gave 20 droplets once a day. In the bottle the dosage can be taken varying between 10-20 droplets and 1-2 times. In such manner we also followed the safe dosages in the literature.
After taking arthemisia annua (she was taking the chemo simultaneously) we observed improvements day by day. She started to move her neck and 2 weeks after she was able to walk and to do many housekeeping tasks. This last week, we knew that her cancer cells were practically reduced to zero.
Now she takes arthemisia annua twice a week. we can not affirm that her improvements were only due to arthemisia but we do not believe that was only due to the chemo. arthemisia could not be used with radio and you should study compatibility with chemo.
carcionomatosis leptomeningeal_our history_1 - 1267349
sarahjones
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Reply # - November 29, 2014, 07:49 AM
Hello,
Hello,
It's wonderful to hear how well your mom is doing; thanks for sharing such good news. As you say, there's no way to know if or how much artemisia contributed to her success, but we're happy for he result.
As GRACE's Dr. Bufi describes here, artemisia has not been well-studied either for efficacy or safety.
JimC
Forum moderator
Reply # - November 29, 2014, 07:17 PM
I'm glad she has improved.
I'm glad she has improved. Unfortunately, individual testimonial accounts, particularly when patients have received a combination of therapies, makes it impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about what agent is responsible for what. That's why we need studies. If arthemesia annua were a clearly effective treatment in the majority of patients, there would be so many patients doing well on it that we wouldn't need to rely on a testimonial of an individual patient who received a combination of therapies and did well.
Again, I'm very happy she has improved, but e are far more swayed by actual studies than anecdotal reports, which are all we have to go on with the vast majority of alternative therapies.
Thanks for sharing your good news.
-Dr. West
Reply # - November 30, 2014, 06:23 PM
You claim that arthemisia
You claim that arthemisia annua is not an effective treatment but please tell me any effective treatment to manage the carcinomatosis leptomeningeal, have you got one?
Indeed, I can not affirm that arthemisia annua was the unique responsible but I clearly ensure that my mother would be dead if we did not take a chance with this alternative treatment.
Additionally, I found some scientific papers (not anedoctal reports, unless you consider Dr. Lai's work anedoctical) with very interesting results. In fact, there are few works and more research is needed.
also, I do not know if arthemisia annua works with other cancers but I can easily understand the chemistry behind the arthemisia behavior, and at least, it deserves to be studied.
But please tell me scientifical reasons to reject the possibility of arthemisia annua be used as source to treat cancer.
Reply # - December 1, 2014, 07:09 AM
Dr. West does not reject the
Dr. West does not reject the possibility that artemisia annua may be an effective cancer treatment, he simply states that he relies on clinical trial evidence before recommending a particular treatment. That requires taking a single group of patients and randomly assigning half to the treatment being studied and half to an established regimen. Until sufficient studies of this sort have been conducted, a treatment cannot be said to have been proven effective.
JimC
Forum moderator
Reply # - December 1, 2014, 07:13 PM
Exactly. I'm not saying it
Exactly. I'm not saying it isn't or couldn't be effective, but rather that a report of a patient who improves after treatment with this agent plus chemo does not constitute sufficient evidence to draw any real conclusions.
Dr. Lai's work is not prospective trials in human patients.
I would welcome further study of arthemisia annua, and if it shows a significant benefit in human trials with large numbers of patients, it would be very worthy of broadly recommending.
-Dr. West