Golombick – Margaret's Corner

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!!!!!!!!!!

Back in 2011 I wrote a brief post/page (if you use my Search box, you can find the page easily) about a study showing that a special type of rice bran (MGN-3/Biobran) combined with curcumin annihilated U266 myeloma cells.

This study was carried out on cells, though, not human beings.

But today, about five years later, we have the results of a small study carried out on 20 curcumin-taking human beings with stable, early-stage MGUS, SMM, and CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia).

And it’s a Terry Golombick (et al) study, to boot.

Here’s the link to the full study, which is available for free online (love that!): http://goo.gl/6n2X3U

The Golombick team tested Ribraxx, a combination of a rice bran and shiitake mushroom extract (too bad it isn’t chocolate with almonds!!!), together with a form of C3 Complex curcumin called Curcuforte (which I’d never heard of before…it’s made by an Australian company), on a group of 10 MGUS/SMM patients and 10 CLL patients.

At a certain point, they mention a previous study, which I missed (!) but will go read tomorrow, on 48 myeloma patients who took two grams of this Ribraxx per day. The results were: increased NK (natural killer) cell activity, increased levels of mDCs (myeloid dendritic cells) in the peripheral blood and of Th-1-related cytokines. Yes, definitely need to check this out…

But right now I have time only for the Golombick study. The MGUS/SMM/CLL patients took a daily dose of six grams of Curcuforte and two grams of Ribraxx, in divided doses.

The study monitored a whole bunch of markers, including CRP, FBC, paraprotein, ESR, B2M and so on. You can read about the markers on page 3, in the “Results” part. Just a few highlights:

8 out of 10 patients saw their neutrophil count increase. Five of them had been neuropenic when they began the study, so that is very good news for them.
Some of the patients experienced a reduction in their ESR; two of them had an 80% reduction…wowsie.

Personal note: throughout the years, my ESR levels have gone down substantially on curcumin alone. In spite of a bit of fluctuation, they have never returned to the high levels that I had back in 2005. Based on my most recent tests, in fact, my ESR levels are less than half (!) what they were in the pre-curcumin period…Not too shabby!

This reduction might be more important than I knew. On page 5 of the study, in fact, I discovered something that I did not know: “In multiple myeloma of the IgG and IgA subtypes, significant correlations have been found between ESR and the monoclonal proteins and between the ESR and percentage of plasma cells in bone marrow.” It might even be “an independent prognostic factor for survival in patients with MM.”

Ouch!

Now I’m even gladder that my ESR levels have decreased more than 50% compared to 2005…!!!

Well, I have to go off to have dinner now (first the cats, then us). But I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to publish this post…so…here goes! I hope you enjoy this study! Ciao!