“Use of curcumin in multiple myeloma patients intolerant of steroid therapy”

A few days ago, Dr. Terry Golombick of the Department of Endocrinology, St George Hospital, Sydney, Australia, sent me the link ( http://bit.ly/2VwqWf1 ) to her team’s most recent clinical case report, in which they tested curcumin on myeloma patients who were no longer able to tolerate the prolonged use of dexamethasone due to its adverse side effects, such as “fatigue, weight gain, fluid retention, poor impact on mental health, osteoporosis and hyperglycemia, or poor diabetic control.”

This new study selected 15 patients, ranging in age from 57 to 86, who were either taking immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) or proteasome inhibitors (PIs) in addition to the dexamethasone. They replaced Dex with a daily dose of 3-4 grams of curcumin (about half of what I take, btw).

Of the 15, three died during the study period…not because of the curcumin, obviously, but because they weren’t doing very well, unfortunately (you can read the details in the paragraph located above “4. Discussion and Conclusion”).

The other 12 patients, however, are stable and doing well, in spite of the fact that some have high-risk cytogenetic and FISH abnormalities.

The combination of curcumin and the other conventional drugs reduced their paraprotein levels by 38%, and plasmacytosis by 59%. How about that?

Anyway, it’s not a difficult read, methinks, so please have a look at the above link…

Thank you, Dr. Golombick! I am so grateful to you and your team for all your tireless work. You give us hope!!! :-) Thank You Thank You Thank You!!!

We need MORE studies like this one! Not 10 years from now…but…NOW!!!!!!!!!! 

Quick update

Well, quite a lot has happened since I wrote my post on the loss of our Priscilla.

A few days after her death, Stefano came home complaining of a sore throat, which soon turned into a full-blown case of bronchitis: more proof, to me anyway!, of a close association between stress (and, in this case, probably grief as well) and a lowering of the immune defenses.

Anyway, we tried to be careful, but to no avail: on top of everything else, I caught his bronchitis and was sick (againnnnnn!) for about two weeks. This happened in mid January or thereabouts. So, all in all, I was sick/convalescent/sick/convalescent for more than a month. Agh! Ridikkulus!

But now I’m fine…fully recovered.

The horrible month of January 2020 ended with another death: my mother-in-law…This didn’t come as a complete surprise, since she’d been doing poorly for some time, but still, on top of everything else…it wasn’t easy.

But, as an upcoming post will show, things seem to be slowly getting better. As I mentioned, I’m fully recovered, and…well, okay, here’s a sneak preview of that above-mentioned post: Stefano and I spent a lovely long weekend in Paris recently. 🙂

We were lucky and managed to return to Florence right before Italy was hit by the coronavirus “hurricane.” Speaking of which, even though I think that the COVID-19 outbreak has generated a bit too much mass hysteria (in Florence, e.g., where thus far there have been only a couple of confirmed cases, people have been emptying supermarket shelves, and so on…), I have to admit that I’d really hate to catch that blasted virus because of my probably-still-weakened condition. So I’m being very cautious…trying to stay at home as much as possible…No hugs, no kisses…washing hands all the time, etc.

Ah, before I go: tomorrow I’m going to publish a post about a new curcumin-myeloma patient study!!! 🙂

Take care, everyone! 🙂