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Thalidomide may be effective in treating bone cancer
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12-6-99 Little Rock. Thalidomide-banned in most countries after it was linked to severe birth defects in the 1960s-may be effective therapy for a type of bone marrow cancer, researchers say. A study of 84 patients with advanced cases of multiple myeloma, a relatively rare form of bone marrow cancer, found that 30 percent responded to the drug. "This is significant in many ways," said Elias Anaissie, MD, one of the researchers at the Arkansas Cancer Research Center who conducted the study. "This is the first drug discovered to cause anti-myeloma activity in 35 years. From that perspective, it's very important." The report was published Nov. 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The patients treated in the study had tried every other form of cancer therapy with no success, Anaissie said. The five-year survival rate for myeloma patients treated with chemotherapy has remained at 29 percent for more than four decades. Anaissie said researchers aren't sure how thalidomide works against the disease, but they speculate that it helps by shutting down new blood vessel formation. This year, 13,700 people will be diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and 11,400 of those will die, according to the American Cancer Society. Thalidomide was banned worldwide in the early 1960s, after thousands of pregnant women who took it for morning sickness gave birth to babies with deformities, mostly in Europe, Canada, and Japan. It received approval from the Food and Drug Administration last year for treatment of leprosy.
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