February 24 2011 post. 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…?