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healthspiritbody · 5 years ago

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Cheap Drugs Could Be The Way To Tackle Cancer, But Big Pharma Won't Acknowledge It

As a GP, Lisa McGrath had always considered herself healthy, but then, at 42, she found a lump in her breast and was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.

It was, as Lisa recalls seven years later, a complete shock. ‘I have never smoked and hardly drink,’ she says. ‘I run regularly and the most overweight I’ve ever been is by 7-10lb. I have had four babies, all breastfed, and I have no family history of breast cancer.’

Cancer had spread into her left armpit and into most of the lymph nodes. ‘It had grown in a sheet rather than a tight ball — a type of tumor that’s harder to detect and is often bigger when it’s found,’ she says.

After a mastectomy, Lisa underwent six cycles of chemotherapy and 25 sessions of radiotherapy. At the time, her eldest son, Patrick, was 22, her next son, Euan, was 11, and her daughters, Sophie and Emily, were just ten and six.

Fighting: Lisa McGrath, 49, a mother of four who is a GP with stage four breast cancer and bone secondaries, is using metformin a proven but not prescribed treatment to keep the condition at bay. She is currently fit and well but the condition will return at some stage

‘The chemotherapy made me terribly ill,’ she recalls. ‘I felt very sick and had severe pain in my hands and feet and terrible headaches. I was exhausted and I lost all my hair, eyelashes and eyebrows.’

Although the treatment — which kills off the cancer cells — cleared the disease, six years later, in spring 2018, Lisa was told it had returned and was now in six sites in the bones of her legs, pelvis, spine, and ribs.

It’s a story unfortunately familiar to far too many patients. But what is unusual is what happened next. As Lisa is a GP, she has a better understanding of the mechanisms of cancer than many people.

She used this to research other options, which she believes, in conjunction with her mainstream treatment, have helped her not only keep cancer at bay but even achieve a small amount of tumor shrinkage.

DIABETES PILL SEEMS TO HALT TUMOUR GROWTH

Central to this is metformin, a drug used for almost a century not for cancer, but as a safe and routine treatment for type 2 diabetes.

In diabetes, it is used to stop the overproduction of glucose in the liver. In cancer treatment, the precise mechanism is unclear, but metformin seems to block the supply of glucose that cancer cells need to grow and multiply; it also blocks the activity of enzymes used for cancer cell growth.

According to the American National Center for Biotechnology Information, a government body, there have been almost 4,500 studies since the early Eighties investigating using metformin as an additional drug in the treatment of cancer.

Only last month, a study in the journal Carcinogenesis showed metformin combined with a class of anti-cancer drugs called CtBP inhibitors reduced breast cancer cell growth by up to 76 percent.

However, the study’s lead author, Dr. Jeremy Blaydes, a cancer cell biologist from the University of Southampton, cautioned: ‘More work is still needed — we need the outcomes of more studies before we can think about recruiting patients into large human trials.’

This was reiterated by Breast Cancer Now, the charity that funded this study. ‘There is not enough evidence to show metformin works,’ a spokesman said.

This reflects the mainstream view, which is why the drug is rarely recommended by cancer specialists and is not available for cancer treatment on the NHS.

Indeed, Lisa has experienced this in her own GP practice. ‘Metformin hasn’t been suggested as an additional treatment for any of my own patients,’ says Lisa, whose surgery is on the Wirral in Merseyside, where she lives with her husband, Conor, a consultant anesthetist.

‘As a GP you aren’t allowed to recommend it — if patients asked about metformin, I could tell them to ask their oncologist about it or say I believe it has a benefit, but that’s all.’ And yet she firmly believes that, in her case, the drug has been key and is convinced that the reason it’s not being used more widely is because it’s not in drug companies’ financial interests to investigate or promote its use.

After her initial diagnosis and successful treatment, Lisa returned to three days a week at work as a GP and got on with life.

‘As far as my doctors were concerned, after the treatment, there was nothing further to see,’ she says. ‘I had all the treatment I could. Then, in February last year, I was out running with friends, and a couple of times I noticed I was getting pains in my hips.

‘I was only doing 5km to 10 km, not crazy distances, but I thought I had better ease off and the hip pain settled down. Then, in April, I had back pain which was new, and the hip pain had come back. I told myself it was wear and tear, but it was beginning to get quite frightening and in June last year I contacted my oncologist at Clatterbridge Hospital, Birkenhead. I knew in my heart that cancer had spread to my bones.’

When scans confirmed this, Lisa was determined to explore all the options.

In addition to her medical degree, she has a second degree in human cell biology.

‘In a couple of years before I was diagnosed, I had done a lot of reading around the effects of old drugs such as metformin and had got interested in how they work,’ she says.

Living proof: Jane McLelland, a trained physiotherapist, is someone who cured herself of cervical cancer that spread to her lungs 16 years ago

Lisa also came across a book, How To Starve Cancer Without Starving Yourself, in which author Jane McLelland, a trained physiotherapist, reveals how she used a combination of metformin and other ‘old’ drugs after cervical cancer spread to her lungs 20 years ago.

At the time, Jane, a mother of two, was given a 5 percent chance of survival. Now 55, she lives in Fulham, West London has been in remission since 2004 and still takes metformin.

While her NHS oncologist prescribed her a new chemotherapy drug, palbociclib, Lisa is also taking metformin as part of a small cocktail of ‘old’ metabolic drugs thought to interrupt the ‘feeding’ of cancer cells. This cocktail includes aspirin and a statin normally given to control cholesterol.

‘They don’t expect palbociclib to reduce the tumor but to halt further progression for three to four years,’ says Lisa. ‘But when my doctors examined me in March this year, while there was no new progression of any of the tumors, there was also a little bit of shrinkage.

‘I’m assuming everything I’m doing may have contributed to starving some cancer cells and caused this reduction,’ she says.

THE SPECIALIST STRUCK BY RESULTS

Another patient who says she’s benefited from metformin is Joanne Myatt, a 43-year-old social worker from Chorley, Lancashire. She was initially treated for breast cancer in 2006, but three years ago the disease returned to her liver and bones.

‘I wrote myself off,’ she says. She started taking metformin nine months ago (in addition to having conventional treatment) ‘and there’s been some shrinkage of the tumor in my liver’.

‘I’m not saying the metformin is a cure, but I do believe it’s doing something.’

Mary Nike, 62, an IT consultant from Brewood, Staffordshire, who was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 2014, told Good Health: ‘All the specialists are amazed that my cancer hasn’t spread. I think metformin is crucial.’

Success: Mary Nike, 58, breast cancer patient who has had a remarkable result from using metformin, a low cost drug normally used for diabetes but which has been found by repeated studies to interrupt cancer growth

Patients who use such drugs have to find sympathetic doctors prepared to offer them on private prescription.

Lisa is being treated at the Care Oncology Clinic in London, one of the only centers in the UK to offer this so-called ‘cancer-starving’ approach.

It was set up five years ago by Dr. Robin Bannister, a pharmaceutical scientist who’s assembled a team of medical doctors to prescribe a metabolic anti-cancer regimen, including metformin, to work in tandem with conventional chemotherapy.

‘We’re approaching cancer treatment from a different angle,’ says Dr. Bannister.

His wife, Ginnie, died in 2017, having originally been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, aged 41. It reappeared in her lungs in 2012, but he believes the five years she survived were in part due to the additional treatment provided by the clinic.

He says: ‘We’ve just published a study in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, showing average survival of 27 months in 95 patients with advanced brain tumors when they followed our protocol, compared with 14 months using standard treatment.’

He adds that while there are ‘some enlightened doctors who remember what they learned in the first year of medical school about cancer metabolism’, the mainstream view is that there is insufficient evidence to recommend metformin.

There is also the suggestion that the cancer industry itself is not interested in pursuing this re-purposing of old drugs.

‘Metformin does slow down tumor growth and gives a survival benefit of a few months, which is comparable to a lot of the £100,000 cancer drugs,’ says cancer specialist Karol Sikora, dean of medicine at the University of Buckingham.

‘But it is very cheap and no one doing a trial would get their money back by extra sales — that’s why there is little interest in promoting it.’

Author Jane McLelland concurs: ‘There is a colossal resistance from the medical and pharmaceutical establishment to these treatments because there is no money in them.

‘Old drugs cost a few pence

instead of hundreds or thousands of pounds, so all the research funds focus on the expensive new drugs.’

Dr. Bannister adds: ‘To do a study to allow you to recommend them for cancer treatment costs money. If all you are going to do is increase sales of a cheap drug, no one is motivated to do that.

‘Cancer Research UK is trialing aspirin albeit extremely slowly, but that’s all.’

Aspirin is believed to slow the progression of the disease by inhibiting a gene that promotes cell proliferation.

When Good Health contacted Cancer Research UK — whose accounts show it receives hundreds of millions of pounds from pharmaceutical companies — Emma Greenwood, director of policy and public affairs, rejected the suggestion that it is influenced by the sales agenda of drug manufacturers. ‘The charity fiercely guards its independence,’ she says.

‘Now we understand much more about what drives cancer, there are increasing opportunities to re-purpose existing drugs and search for new treatments.’

This includes researching metformin for prostate cancer.

Lisa McGrath is not convinced. ‘I used to have a monthly direct debit for Cancer Research but now I think it only promotes treatments big pharma promotes.

‘My oncologist is very supportive. He sees I’m doing a lot of things he wasn’t aware of. I know I’m in a bad situation, but it’s better than doing nothing.’

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) confirmed: ‘We’ve only appraised metformin for type 2 diabetes and we do not have any pending reviews for [it] as a cancer treatment.’

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Cheap Drugs Could Be The Way To Tackle Cancer, But Big Pharma Won’t Acknowledge It was originally published on Health Spirit Body

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harryandmeghan0-blog · 6 years ago

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Prince Harry and Meghan's royal baby: Everything we know so far - USA TODAY

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/prince-harry-and-meghans-royal-baby-everything-we-know-so-far-usa-today/

Prince Harry and Meghan's royal baby: Everything we know so far - USA TODAY

Kensington Palace confirmed the royal baby news and announced that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is expecting to deliver in the spring of 2019. She and Prince Harry wed in May. USA TODAY

Duchess Meghan of Sussex with Prince Harry greeted crowds during a visit to Birkenhead in northwest England, Jan. 14, 2019.

(Photo: Charlotte Graham/AP)

Royalty is proving fruitful these days: Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s news Monday that they expect a baby in the spring means another new cousin will join Queen Elizabeth II’s growing gaggle of great-grandchildren.

Soon, there will be eight little royals to delight the 92-year-old monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, 97.

The news was announced by Kensington Palace just as Harry and Meghan were arriving to start their Down Under tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga.

This baby is going to be historic, says Victoria Arbiter, daughter of a former royal press secretary, who is now CNN’s royals contributor.

“There’s no question he or she is going to be gorgeous and adorable, half-American and of mixed-race heritage, so what a time to be witnesses to the royal family and history,” Arbiter says. “It does reflect on modern society: History is being made with this baby.”

What do we know so far?

When is the baby arriving?

Until January, the due date for the Sussex baby was vague: Sometime in “the spring,” the palace said. On Jan. 14, during a day trip with Harry to Birkenhead near Liverpool in northwest England. Meghan was chatty during a walkabout, greeting scores of fans while cradling her prominent belly.

In conversations with some of them, she let slip that she is six months along and that the baby is due in April and that, like Prince William and Duchess Kate of Cambridge during their pregnancies, they don’t know the baby’s gender.

“We asked her how her pregnancy was going and she said she was six months and she tapped her tummy,” Carla Gandy told People magazine’s reporter on the scene.

In this image from video, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan of Sussex arrive in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 15, 2018, a day before they start a 16-day tour of Australia and the South Pacific.

(Photo: AP)

ITV News reported Meghan talked of her due date with another woman, Eileen Ashurst, who told the outlet Meghan said the newest royal baby is expected in April.

And Angel Midgley told the BBC that Meghan said the couple is waiting until the baby is born to learn if it’s a boy or girl.

Kensington Palace declined to comment on any of this to USA TODAY, but it’s probably safe to mark your calendars.

Who are the baby’s royal cousins?

The baby will be first cousin to Prince George, 5; Princess Charlotte, 3; and baby Prince Louis of Cambridge, almost 9 months, the children of uncle Prince William and Duchess Kate.

Princess Eugenie of York and Jack Brooksbank in wedding photos taken in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle with some of the queen’s great-grandchildren as bridesmaids and page boys: From left, back row: Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Theodora Williams, Isla Phillips, Louis De Givenchy. Front row, Mia Tindall, Savannah Phillips and Maud Windsor.

(Photo: Alex Bramall/Buckingham Palace via AP)

The baby’s four second cousins include Mia Tindall, 4, and Lena Tindall, who was born in June to Harry’s cousin, Zara Phillips Tindall (the queen’s eldest granddaughter), and her husband Mike Tindall.

Also: Savannah Phillips, 7, and Isla Phillips, 6, the daughters of Zara’s brother, Peter Phillips, also Harry’s cousin and the queen’s eldest grandson. Both Zara and Peter are the children of Princess Anne, the Princess Royal.

And Princess Eugenie of York, 28, the queen’s granddaughter and Harry’s cousin who married Jack Brooksbank on Friday, might be expected to produce royal great-grandchild Number 9 in the near future, too. That baby also would be a second cousin to Harry and Meghan’s baby.

No morning sickness for Meghan?

Duchess Meghan of Sussex visits University of Chichester’s Engineering and Digital Technology Park during an official visit to Sussex on Oct. 3, 2018 in Bognor Regis, England.

(Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage)

She just turned 37, so doctors consider this a “geriatric” pregnancy (when mom is over age 35) with a higher risk for miscarriage and other complications.

“Most geriatric pregnancies end up with a great outcome (healthy mom and baby) as long as there is a close monitoring in the prenatal period and during the pregnancy,” says Zaher Merhi, an ob-gyn doctor and director of research and development in IVF Technologies at New Hope Fertility Center in New York.

Still, it appears Meghan is not suffering from the acute morning sickness syndrome that felled her sister-in-law, Duchess Kate, during the early months of her three pregnancies.

Thus, Meghan was able to endure a long overseas flight to Australia before embarking on a grueling two weeks of traveling to public engagements in the Southern Hemisphere, where high temperatures can be expected.

Like Kate, Meghan is slim and she doesn’t show much of a baby bump in early stages. On Oct. 3, she wore a dark green leather skirt during an engagement; there wasn’t even a hint of a pregnancy.

That didn’t stop Twitter from speculating on what Meghan wore to Eugenie’s wedding: a loose-fitting, navy Givenchy coat, which could have hidden a baby bump.

Will the new baby be called a prince or princess? Something else?

Betting on whether the new little royal will be a boy or girl commenced immediately in Britain, where they bet on anything having to do with royals. More interesting is the question of whether the baby will be officially titled a prince or princess.

The simple answer is it’s up to the queen. It also matters how far the child is to the throne. This baby will be 7th in line, just behind Harry, who is 6th in line, so he or she is unlikely to ever be crowned.

More: Where does the new prince fit in the line for the throne?

In hindsight, we’d really like to know what Harry was telling his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, at the wedding of his cousin, Princess Eugenie, on Oct. 12.

(Photo: AARON CHOWN, AFP/Getty Images)

The rules on titles and “style” were last established by the queen’s grandfather, King George V, in 1917: They dictate that an HRH and title of prince or princess would be confined to children of the sovereign and the children of sons of the sovereign.

“The grandchildren of the sons of any such Sovereign in the direct male line (save only the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) shall have and enjoy in all occasions the style and title enjoyed by the children of dukes,” the rules say.

So Prince George, as eldest son of the elder son of Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and thus third in line to the throne, got the prince title. But the queen also bestowed it on Princess Charlotte, 4th in line, and baby Prince Louis, 5th in line.

If the queen decides the first Sussex baby will not be styled prince or princess, the baby, if a boy, would likely take one of Harry’s lesser titles, such as Earl of Dumbarton, that he received from the queen on the morning of his wedding along with royal Duke of Sussex.

Arbiter says the baby’s grandfather, future King Charles III, might want to ensure that all his grandchildren have titles, since they are likely to carry out public duties when they are older and their granddad is on the throne.

“This is a decision not to be taken lightly, which is one reason why there has been no decision announced as yet,” Arbiter says. “I think this is going to be decided by the queen, Prince Charles and Meghan and Harry together.”

Who comes after Harry and Meghan’s baby? See more of the line of succession

The baby will have an unprecedented ancestry for the royal family.

The baby will be one-quarter African-American, thanks to Meghan, whose father is white and whose mother is African-American. There’s never been an acknowledged part-African baby born into the royal family – or even an American baby.

Meghan is believed to be the first royal bride with African-American ancestry to join the family, although some scholars insist that 18th-century King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, had African ancestry many generations back before she was born in 1744 in Germany. And the Windsors all descend from one of their sons.

Nevertheless, it would be a first in the modern era, and would likely boost the family’s popularity with its growing minority populations in the U.K. and in the Commonwealth, where Harry and Meghan will play an important role.

Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan of Sussex greet well wishers during their visit to Chichester, England, Oct. 3, 2018.

(Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AP)

MORE: Pregnant celebrities 2019: Who’s due, baby bump pics and gender reveals

Will the baby be a British citizen, an American citizen or both?

The baby will likely be born in London at St. Mary’s Hospital so for sure he or she will be a citizen of the United Kingdom, especially as a member of the British royal family.

But Meghan, as an American awaiting U.K. citizenship, could also pass on her U.S. citizenship to her baby – unless she renounces her citizenship for tax purposes after she receives her U.K. citizenship and before the baby is born.

If not, Meghan could ensure the baby has dual citizenship by applying for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad before the child’s 18th birthday. The State Department recommends parents apply for the CRBA as soon as possible after the child’s birth.

According to American rules, once the child reaches 18, he or she may choose either citizenship or keep both.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are expecting a baby, and many are asking if the baby could have red hair. Buzz60’s Keri Lumm explains the possibility. Buzz60

Will the baby have red hair like Prince Harry’s?

The gene for red hair in humans is recessive, meaning generally you can have red hair only by getting two red-hair genes, one each from your parents. A brown gene combined with a red gene usually produces brown hair, because brown is usually the dominant gene.

British bookies seem to believe that if Harry, seen here with Princess Diana just before his third birthday in 1987, has a daughter, she may be named after her late grandmother. But her name is more likely to be passed down than the Spencer gene for red hair.

(Photo: JOHN REDMAN, AP)

Red hair runs in Harry’s family: The Earls of Spencer, the family of his mother, Princess Diana, had lots of “gingers,” as they call it in Britain. Diana’s father, brother and one of her sisters had or have hair like Harry’s.

It’s possible that somewhere in Meghan’s genetic makeup there might be a gene for red hair from one of her ancestors, but the likelihood of it turning up in Meghan and then combining with Harry’s gene to produce another ginger prince is small.

John H. McDonald, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Delaware, says the basic genetics we learned in high school is either wrong or oversimplified. He says it is possible, for instance, for two brown-haired parents to produce a redhead child – such as himself – because inheritance involves multiple factors besides genes.

“Human traits are more complicated than the simple recessive model we learned,” McDonald says. “I would say it wouldn’t be a shocking surprise (if the royal baby had red hair). My guess is there’s a 5 to 10 percent chance but it makes a big difference if her European ancestors were from, say, Ireland (vs.) Greece.”

What will the baby’s name be?

Again, let’s go to the bookies. BetVictor, a leading European online betting company, put the name Diana as the 6-to-1 favorite if it’s a girl, said spokesman Charlie McCann.

Diana, for Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana, is also one of the middle names of Princess Charlotte, Harry’s niece.

“We make Diana our 6/1 favorite with Charles and Elizabeth next best at 12/1,” McCann said. “We have seen a bit of interest in both Alexander and Alexandra since this morning, although it will not be until the New Year before the market (heats) up as speculation intensifies over the name and gender of the baby.”

More: Duchess Meghan, Prince Harry are expecting their first child in the spring

More: ‘Best news ever!’: Twitter reacts to Harry and Meghan’s pregnancy

More: Duchess Meghan, Prince Harry arrive in Australia for official visit, Invictus Games

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