Interesting cancer treatment

Deb · Post by **Deb** » Wed May 14, 2014 4:30 am

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/he ... 55541.html
Stacy Erholtz was out of conventional treatment options for blood cancer last June when she underwent an experimental trial at the Mayo Clinic that injected her with enough measles vaccine to inoculate 10 million people.

The 50-year-old Pequot Lakes mother is now part of medical history.

The cancer, which had spread widely through her body, went into complete remission and was undetectable in Erholtz’s body after just one dose of the measles vaccine, which has an uncanny affinity for certain kinds of tumors.

Post by **tex** » Wed May 14, 2014 10:10 am

Hmmmmmm. Interesting concept — using disease to wipe out disease. IOW, using a viral predator to wipe out another disease. Apparently the future is here.

Thanks for the information.

Tex

Zizzle · Post by **Zizzle** » Thu May 15, 2014 10:19 am

Awesome. I read about a treatment for IBD where they inject certain gut bacteria under the skin and it induces remission. Not sure how/why it works, but I'm intrigued.

Deb · Post by **Deb** » Sat May 17, 2014 2:36 pm

Here's another article on the treatment.
http://www.postbulletin.com/life/health ... f1cef.html

Post by **tex** » Sat May 17, 2014 2:51 pm

I find this phrase from that article to be very troubling (I'm not concerned about the treatment described in the article, but about long-term cancer treatment, in general).

They have also learned to focus, for the study, on multiple myeloma patients who lack antibodies that would otherwise attack the measles virus. They lack the antibodies because long-term cancer treatment can erase the immune system.

Is that true? Or was that statement simply an error in semantics, and it actually meant only that the immune system is temporarily suppressed? (The red emphasis is mine, of course.) A permanent erasure would be very serious business, because it would amount to resetting the immune system, presumably back to square one (with no ability to detect any threats to health). What about all the people who are taking immune system suppressants to treat various autoimmune type diseases? Will their immune systems eventually be erased? That could have very serious implications for long-term health.

I'm guessing that the author of the article simply didn't understand the implications well enough to realize the implications in that statement, and he phrased it incorrectly, because as far as I am aware, the effects of such treatments only lasts for as long as the treatment is still in effect (plus a carryover period as the residual drug is purged from the body).

Tex