Update on the Consumer Lab curcumin report

February 24, 2008 / / Leave a comment

A blog reader who uses the curcumin manufactured by Ageless Cures sent this company an e-mail expressing her concern about the recent Consumer Lab report (see my February 8 2008 post for details; there you can also read a message by an Ageless Cures representative: I would like to mention that I did NOT get in touch with Ageless Cures…but I must say this message made me feel like a VIP). Anyway, my blog reader received an immediate reply with reassurances that Ageless Cures was looking closely into the matter and working with Consumer Lab to figure it all out.

A few days ago she received another message from Ageless Cures, including a certificate of analysis of a 500 mg batch. I just checked, and the same certificate can be downloaded from the Ageless Cures website, and also the certificate of analysis of the 1000 mg batch.

The curcumin lot analysed by Consumer Lab was a 500 mg batch that had been discontinued in June 2007. Ageless Cures informed my blog reader that it transferred the manufacture of its 500 mg capsules to an FDA certified facility in October 2007. That seems to take care of that problem.

I admit that I can’t help wondering why Consumer Lab tested a discontinued batch of curcumin in the first place? That makes little or no sense at all. Hmmm. Moreover, it did not test the popular 1000 mg pill (odd, eh?), which is manufactured in an FDA, GMP (which means “Good Manufacturing Practices,” not “Greater Manchester Police” 🙂 ) and BBB (must be “Better Business Bureau”) certified facility. More hmmms.

Well, anyway, here follows the message my blog reader received from Ageless Cures (she authorized me to publish it; I have edited out some parts of it, such as personal references):

“Attached is the Certificate of Analysis of Curcumin 500mg and Super Curcumin 1000mg products performed by Internationally recognized Testing Labs Eurofins Scientific. Every batch manufactured by Ageless Cures is being tested and results posted on www.agelesscures.com. A copy of the COA is being enclosed with every order effective FEB 10th, 2008.

The test results show that the Active Curcumin levels (curcuminoids) meet or exceed the label specifications within tolerance. This same batch products manufactured in NOV-DEC 2007 are being shipped to customers. The same test methods purportedly used by Consumer Lab, HPCL (High performance Liquid Chromatography) is used to test the products for Active curcuminoids.

Certificate of Analysis Summary

Curcumin C3 Complex 500mg – 90 Capsules. Lot# 151011. Exp Date:12/2011. TEST RESULT: 512 mg of Active Curcumin (curcuminoids)

Super Curcumin C3 Complex w/Bioperine 1000mg. Lot# 101044. Exp Date:1/2011. TEST RESULT: 975mg of Active Curcumin (curcuminoids) + Bioperine.

Ageless Cures strongly feels that our customers are entitled to know the quality of products being purchased from us. We buy the most expensive organic Curcumin, manufacture in a FDA, GMP and BBB certified facility, maintain stringent quality standards and market directly to keep prices low.

The Consumer Lab report is a small blip which pertained to a specific small batch which we ceased to market long back and have also changed manufacturing to an FDA certified facility. We are also looking into the testing methods used by Consumer Labs and have been working with them to present all our products for voluntary testing.”

From the very beginning, I always found it odd that Consumer Lab, a For Profit Organization (…), didn’t test the Doctor’s Best curcumin (very popular among us curcumin-takers; I have taken it, too) or the more popular NSI curcumin brand. It instead tested some obscure (to me, at least!) curcumin brands.

Odd, yes.

Update on cyclopamine

February 21, 2008 / / 17 Comments

Yesterday a myeloma list member reported his test results after five cycles of cyclopamine. He authorized me to post about it. If you have no clue as to what I am writing about, see my August 2 and 3 2007 posts about cyclopamine, or my permanent page (see my Pages on the right, and look under "Other anti-myeloma/cancer supplements").

Here are some details posted by the cyclopamine-taking list member (from now on, I will refer to him as CT, or cyclopamine-taker) took a water-soluble form of cyclopamine for a year and a half. More specifically, he took 200 mg of cyclopamine a day for 14-15 days at a time, every 2-4 months. His m-spike went from 1.0 (achieved after two stem cell transplants two and a half years ago) to 0.2, then to 0.1, and he is convinced that these decreases, the first since his transplants, were due to his cyclopamine intake. Coincidental? Possibly. He reported, by the way, no side effects. Indeed, he feels great.

Okay, but we should not get TOO excited about this substance. The main reason, at least as far as I am concerned, is that it costs an arm and a leg. I had the brilliant idea of seeing if I could order some and ask my parents bring it over to me when they fly to Italy for their regular summer visit, but when I saw what it cost, i.e. thousands of dollars, my eyes almost popped out of my head. No way I could afford it. CT has a cheaper source than what I found online, but it’s still way beyond my budget.

Another list member pointed out that he would be anxious about potential side effects that might not manifest themselves immediately, but perhaps 20 years down the road. But CT (good sense of humour!) said that he would be happy to survive 20 years with myeloma! Indeed. He added that he is well aware that there are possible risks involved in taking a substance that hasn’t been approved by the FDA, but after all, we are dealing with myeloma, not an ingrown toenail (my analogy, actually). So true.

CT reminded us that Dr. Matsui reported in April 2006 at the American Association for Cancer Research (AARC) meeting that cyclopamine caused differentiation of myeloma stem cells. In other words, the myeloma stem cells were eliminated because they did not produce any more cancer stem cells. The stem cells turned into mature plasma cells that eventually died out. Normal cells were not affected, he reported.

For an interesting Science Daily article (2002) on cyclopamine, see: http://tinyurl.com/2zcwut

In PubMed there are 260 studies on cyclopamine. But there is not one clinical trial. Typical.

As usual, I hope this situation will change soon. If it does, I might be first in line!

Update on the update: with this post, I wanted to report on an interesting case, perhaps (I hope!) a crucial one in the battle against myeloma stem cells. I would like to underline, though, that I am not encouraging folks to take cyclopamine. Even though we aren’t pregnant sheep (if you are puzzled about that statement, read my page on cyclopamine: all will be clear ), we still don’t know if there might be harmful side effects (etc.). CT did report that he had none, which is extremely important. In sum, I think this substance should definitely be put on our watch-and-see list. Yes, indeedie!

Weeping for health…

February 18, 2008 / / 1 Comment

That onions are good for us is nothing new. If you have high glucose, a cold, a cough, high cholesterol, heart disease, asthma, high blood pressure or are at risk of developing certain types of cancer (colon, ovarian, prostate and so forth), etc., incorporate onions into your diet. Onions are good for us, period.

But the real reason I am writing this post is as follows: a recent Ralph Moss report, titled (hehe) “Read it and weep” (see: http://tinyurl.com/ytc2mp), contains some interesting titbits about onions. In recent years, he tells us, sweet onion varieties have been becoming more popular in U.S. supermarkets, mainly because they are less expensive than the red, yellow and white varieties, but also because they don’t make you weep all over the place when you cut them.

But are these blander varieties as healthful as their more pungent cousins? Not by a long shot. A group of Cornell scientists, Moss writes, compared the “phenolic and flavonoid content of 10 varieties of onion.” Shallots made the top of the list, followed by yellow and red onions (varieties grown in the U.S., but I presume or hope the same would be true of European varieties…?). And so on. You can see the list on Moss’ website, and you can also read the Cornell University news release here: http://tinyurl.com/yptld2.

The Cornell researchers tested all the onion varieties with cancer cells (for details, see the above-mentioned news release). Upshot: shallots and yellow and red onions had the strongest anti-cancer effects.

If you have a hard time peeling onions, the World’s Healthiest Foods website suggests chilling them for about an hour before using. That is a better method than peeling them under running water, which may wash away some of the healthful compounds, thus defeating the purpose.

I learned a fascinating little fact on the WHF website: the workers who built the pyramids in ancient Egypt were paid with…yes, with onions. I must admit that I wouldn’t be too happy if my salary consisted of onions!

Seriously, now, my final point is: forget about sweet or white onions, but buy or grow shallots or yellow or red onions. The bitterer, the better!

Myeloma patients under age 50

February 17, 2008 / / 2 Comments

Well, so much for giving up research for a few days.

But last night Sherlock sent me a new “Blood” study that perked my interest. You can read the abstract here: http://tinyurl.com/264753 And, as usual, I would be happy to forward the full study to anybody upon request.

A few preliminary remarks:

1. I am always wary of statistics, of which this study is full. Lots of numbers! My head was spinning at one point…

2. The study considers only myeloma patients undergoing conventional treatments.

3. Specifically: “Patients with smouldering (asymptomatic) myeloma, amyloidosis and monoclonal IgM disorders were not included.”

That said, the study contains some interesting information. As follows.

The International Myeloma Working Group analysed 10,549 myeloma patients for this project. 17 institutions and study groups from North America, Japan and Europe participated in the study, which covers the period 1981-2002. Most of the patients were from Europe.

The authors “report the presenting features and outcome after conventional and high-dose therapy in 10,549 myeloma patients and compare the findings obtained in 1,689 patients less than 50 years of age with those of 8,860 older patients.” 70% of all the patients had participated in clinical trials (7,413 people). Stage of the disease was assessed using the International Staging System, or ISS (see: http://tinyurl.com/2ab8sw), and the Durie-Salmon system, see: http://tinyurl.com/ytcqe9

“Median age of all 10,549 patients combined was 60 years.” 1,689, or 16%, were younger than 50 years of age. Most of these were between 40 and 50. Only 312 were younger than 40, and 27 younger than 30.

Younger patients had fewer adverse prognostic factors such as low albumin and high B2M (beta-2 microglobulin). They also scored better than older patients in terms of haemoglobin, C-reactive protein and creatinine. The two groups (a. more than 50 years of age, b. less than 50) had comparable levels of LDH and bone marrow plasma cell infiltration, which indicated “an absence of a major difference in the biology of the myeloma clone between young and older patients.”

Interesting bit of information about the <40 group: most of the patients, 67%, were male. The authors speculate further on that it could be due to “increased androgenic sex hormone levels in young males.” No difference, however, between male and female patients.

Risk of death was higher in the older patients. Now, excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but had the reverse had been found, i.e. that younger patients died at a higher rate than older ones, that would have made no sense, right? So the following bit of news hardly seems to be earth-shattering: “Better outcome in the younger cohort was seen in all three ISS stages and was independent of gender.”

In particular, “High-dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell transplantation resulted in a higher relative excess risk of death in the older patients (median survival 5.7 years) compared to the younger patients (7.5 years). Similarly, the observed 10-year survival rate was significantly higher in the younger patients (43% versus 29%, logrank P=.005). Relative survival was similar in the subgroup of patients aged 40 to <50 years versus that of very young patients, both after conventional chemotherapy (4.4 years versus 4.7 years) and after autologous transplantation (7.3 years versus 7.5 years) (relative excess risk estimate: 1.09 and 0.93, respectively). And 10-year survival rates were also similar, both after conventional (21% versus 19%, P=.37) and after high-dose treatment (44% versus 38%, P=.76, by log-rank test).”

Sorry about all these long quotes, but it’s difficult to summarize numbers!

Ah, and what have we here? Another long quote! As follows: “Conventional therapy was given to 994 (58.9%) of the 1,689 patients aged less than 50 years and to 6,771 (76.4%) of the older patients, while high-dose therapy was administered to 695 (41.1%) of the younger and to 2,089 (23.6%) of the older patients, respectively. The percentage of young patients enrolled during different time periods for treatment with conventional therapy decreased from 94.2% in the period between 1981-1987 to 21.3% in the years between 1999-2002 (P<.001) while the proportion of those subjected to high-dose therapy increased from 5.7% to 78.7% (P<.001)(Table 3). The respective figures for older patients were 98.8% to 40.1% (P<.001) for conventional, and 1.2% to 59.9% (P<.001) for high-dose therapy.”

And now we get to the final part of the study (I skipped a lot of the numbers, eh!), and, you guessed it, here is another long quote: “The most important finding in this study on 10,549 patients with multiple myeloma was the significant differences in the presenting features between young and older patients. Young patients presented with significantly lower ISS stage and consequently had less frequently elevation of ß2-microglobulin and reduction of low serum albumin levels. In addition, significantly fewer younger patients presented with poor performance status, anemia, renal impairment, or increased CRP levels. Older patients, in contrast had a greater prevalence of less favorable prognostic factors. Hence, both a lower ISS stage at diagnosis and overall better prognostic factors seem to account for the superior survival in young patients treated with high-dose therapy after correction for differences in life expectancies, with age remaining an independent risk factor for patients treated with conventional therapy.” Another finding was the low number of young patients: only 0,26% were younger than 30 years of age. Young age was associated with longer survival.

The study concludes that “myeloma patients less than 50 years of age had significantly longer age-adjusted survival both after conventional and high-dose therapy (5.4 and 7.5 years, respectively) in relation to older patients (3.7 and 5.7 years, respectively). Given the fact that thalidomide and other new drugs were not available for the great majority of patients, the 10-year survival rate was remarkably high in young patients after conventional (19%) and high-dose therapy (43%). The major factors accounting for this improved outcome of young patients were presentation with a lower ISS stage at diagnosis and other more favorable prognostic features.”

Even though, as stated above, I am wary of statistics and take them with a grain of salt, I admit that I would really like to read a similar statistical analysis concerning those of us following alternative treatments. Perhaps some day…who knows?

Research overload?

February 16, 2008 / / 4 Comments

I don’t know exactly what has been happening to me lately. In the past few days, perhaps even in the past week, I have had a hard time focusing on my usual, almost daily online research. I start looking things up but am easily distracted and, again easily!, get a case of the fidgets.

I recently “unearthed” a new plant extract that has anti-myeloma effects in vitro (eh, what else is new?)…discoveries like that usually make me spend hours online doing research. So why am I not able to concentrate on this new substance or anything else that has to do with research? This morning I finally erased about a dozen unopened Science Daily updates without even glancing quickly at them. Ehhh? What’s wrong?

Well, I may have reached the point of…research overload. That’s my conclusion. The huge amount of information, web links, e-mails and whatnot that I receive every day may finally have…saturated my brain.

As you may have noticed from my shorter posts these days, I have pulled back a bit from my daily blogging routine. This doesn’t mean that I am abandoning my blog, eh. That will never happen. I love my blog. I check in at least twice a day to see if I have any comments (or, horror, spam messages that need to be erased). If I find a neat link, I add it to my blogroll. I never thought I would become so attached to a project like this, but well, I am hooked for good. I love reading readers’ comments. I love corresponding with you all. I (usually) enjoy doing my research. And without my blog, I never would have met Sherlock (in real life, I mean). Ah, I would indeed have missed out on A LOT.

On a brighter note: Stefano and I are in the midst of planning a late spring or early summer trip to see the puffins. Very exciting. You may recall my I-adore-puffins! post. Well, the long-awaited puffin trip is really going to happen (for those who have no idea what I am talking about: puffins are funny-looking seabirds, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin for more info and photos; there are also many websites, such as Scotland’s "SOS Puffin" or Maine’s "Project Puffin," that allow you to adopt a puffin: a little money goes a long way!).

I confess, I can’t wait! If we could leave tomorrow…but of course right now the puffins are still way out in the Atlantic Ocean. We won’t be able to see them until April-May, when they come ashore to breed.

Yes, this is Puffin Year. My wish is about to be granted!