Saturday, November 30, 2013

Integrating Chinese and Western Medicine to Treat Cancer

This is quite good news! A documentary from RTHK shows how government hospitals is now combining traditional Chinese herbal medicine into its "western"-based medical care to combat cancer.
Among many of the reported benefits are:
  • Herbs that substantially reduce the tiredness induced by chemo in the treatment of stage 4 breast cancer, allowing patient much higher leukocytes count, better health and abilities to complete the chemotherapy on time.
  • Development of patented Rx Arsenol to treat APL (Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia). Arsenic trioxide was the main ingredient of Pi Shuang (砒霜), and making it into a liquid/oral formulation provided for better pharmacology and lowered side effects (as opposed to IV form).
Hopefully more of this kind of research get sponsored. And let's hope it does not take the standard 10-12 years of "western" drug development life cycle, as such therapy just need to be "rediscovered"...