Increased in vivo efficacy of lenalidomide by addition of piroctone olamine…

First, an update on my computer situation. Stefano fixed it yesterday evening, and I have to say that the new superfast groovyzoomything that he installed in its belly seems to know what I want to do even before I begin typing…in fact, I can barely keep up with my computer now…Amazing.

Ah, before I forget: I didn’t check my e-mail during the frustrating, slow-as-a-snail laptop period, so I found 120 or so messages lying (unread) in my e-box yesterday evening. Yikes! It will take me a while to go through all of them, so I just wanted to say that if you have written to me with a question or two but haven’t heard back yet, please send me a reminder…Thanks!

Now, before getting to the point of this post, I would like to remind you of what I wrote a couple of years ago about an antifungal goo (= a nail fungus treatment, actually) called ciclopirox olamine, or CPX, which was shown to have devastating effects on leukemia, myeloma and solid tumor cells. Here is the link to my CPX page: http://margaret.healthblogs.org/other-alternative-treatments/ciclopirox-olamine-nail-fungus-treatment/ Please note that CPX targets leukemic STEM cells, too…Ah yes!!! Very exciting…

A quick note: a blog reader wrote that her husband was in the CPX clinical trial at Vancouver General Hospital (click on the link above to read her comments). Well, this afternoon I went to the Clinical Trials website where I found that this particular trial is going to end in October 2011…so it may be a bit too early now to have any results. But, Lyn, if you have an update of any sort, would you please get in touch with me? That would be lovely, thanks! 🙂

Okay, fast forward to last Sunday (morning), which is when I stumbled across an interesting abstract discussing another antifungal substance called piroctone olamine, or PO, which KILLS myeloma cells (=major apoptotic activity) as well as lymphoma ones. See: http://goo.gl/Dgbuy This stuff was tested also in vivo (= mice), as you can read in the abstract…

Another interesting titbit: when lenalidomide (Revlimid), a derivative of thalidomide, was added to PO, the effects on the myeloma cell lines were even stronger…

The abstract concludes that These results reveal a significant selective induction of apoptosis by PO and suggest a significant in vivo effect against myeloma.

So far, so good. Now, after doing a bit of research, I discovered that, yes, PO is indeed used to treat fungal infections…but it seems mainly to be used in the treatment of moderate to severe dandruff. No, really, I am NOT kidding! See: http://goo.gl/Y3xyV

So here we have TWO substances that treat nail fungus and severe dandruff…and they BOTH annihilate myeloma cells, too? If I hadn’t read it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, either…

Well, I am not sure what to do with all this antifungal myeloma information, but I find it interesting that curcumin also has strong antifungal activity…Personal anecdote (which I have mentioned before…): back in 2006, some time after I began taking curcumin, my chronic…bothersome and painful…yeast infections disappeared once and for all…and, incidentally, have not returned (see: http://goo.gl/MQOXW) …AND my myeloma has also been more or less stable since then…

Well. Makes you wonder…doesn’t it? Any ideas or thoughts or suggestions? Should we be running out to buy some of this wondrous dandruff shampoo (without any parabens, of course) or…?

9 Comments

  1. Just took a quick look at your post and plan to read the articles later. But you should know that the anti-spam word is WHOA so maybe hold off until further notice 🙂

  2. If we reverse the question: do people with MM often have nail fungus? Could there be a relationship between nail fungus and MM? Coincidence or not, I’ve got …

  3. Yes I have been studying more and more lately on the effects of fungus with cancer. The cancer cell seems to be surrounded by a type of fungus or something similar, hence some of the natural and chemo treatments are not s effective. Lately I have been promoting the pH along with anti fungal (natural) items to help especially with the MM and other cancers. The pH is vital to the well being of the body. So your comments on antifungal do come into play. There is so much we do not know but we are own researchers. Keep up the goodwork.

  4. Margeret, I forwarded this study to my oncologist at Univertiy of Wurzburg. He replied and said, that this sstudy is unfortunately no good work (?!?) Without going deeper into it. It would be quite interesting, to know more about good and perhaps not so good studies. What makes a study really worthy. Is he wrong? What criterias do we have to find in a “good” study? Would be great if you could discuss this in one of your articles. Best, Pter

  5. Peter, could you ask your oncologist to be more specific (he could hardly be more generic!)?

    Unfortunately, I was not able to get my hands on the full text of this German study. One of the first things I usually do, you see, is check out the study authors’ affiliations to see if there might be a conflict of interest. In this particular case, though, even though I was unable to check that information, I would be quite surprised if that were the case…

    What is certain is that we cannot judge if your oncologist is right or wrong if he limits his comments to “it’s bad work.” That is NOT acceptable. Either he explains what he means, using examples etc., or, as far as I am concerned, this case is closed…for now, at least.

    In my opinion, a “good” study is as independent as possible. Always check the study authors and their affiliations…

  6. Hi Margeret, in a mail he just wrote “unfortunately no good work”. I worte a second mail and asked for more details. When I got something, I will forward it to you. Of course we need more arguments. Best regards, Peter

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