Pancreatic Cancer May Be Treatable With Tree Extract

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating diagnosis.

The signs of pancreatic cancer, at least at first, are so ambiguous that it is hard to rule out other conditions that require entirely different kinds of treatment. In its early stages, pancreatic cancer usually causes "stomach" pain, but so do stomach conditions. There can be back pain, but back pain has many other causes. As the condition progresses there is fatigue, which likewise has many possible causes, maybe some weight loss, which many people would actually welcome, darkening of the urine, like the darkening caused by dehydration, maybe darkening of the stools, which would not even be noticed, changes in skin color, and chronic itching. None of these early symptoms screams "You have pancreatic cancer!" 

Laboratory tests are similarly vague. There's a biomarker called CA 19-9 that can be elevated by pancreatic cancer, but about 80 percent of the time elevated CA 19-9 does not mean there's pancreatic cancer, while 10 to 20 percent of pancreatic cancer patients lack the enzyme the body needs to make the diagnostic marker at all. There's another diagnostic marker called carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), but over half of the time pancreatic cancers don't generate this marker, either. For all of these reasons, by the time pancreatic cancer is finally detected, it's hard to treat. Only 28 percent of patients survive as long as a year after diagnosis. Only 7 percent survive for five years.

An East Indian Herb for Pancreatic Cancer?

Researchers have tested thousands of herbs and traditional combinations of herbs for treating pancreatic cancer. One herb that stands out is the leaf of the South Asian neem tree. 

READ Pancreatic (Pancreas) Cancer Symptoms and Treatment Alternatives

What is neem? Also known by its botanical name Azadirachta, neem is a tropical tree that can not just survive but even thrive on poor soils in places that get scanty rainfall. Its leaves are used in soaps and shampoos as a soothing, anti-inflammatory agent. There is a long list of applications of neem in Ayurvedic medicine. Western researchers noticed that pancreatic cancer cells treated with neem are more susceptible to radiation (that is, neem may make radiation treatment more effective), but a research team led by Dr. Rajkumar Lakshmanaswamy of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has found that a component of neem called nimbolide may have a more direct effect on pancreatic cancer even in lieu of other forms of treatment.

Nimbolide Against Pancreatic Cancer

The researchers in Texas have found that nimbolide acts as a kind of anti-antioxidant. We all have heard how antioxidants protect cell health. They also protect cancer cell health. (There actually are situations in which the risk of cancer  increases if you take excessive amounts of supplemental antioxidants). By encouraging the production of free radicals of oxygen and interfering with the action of antioxidants in way that affects pancreatic cancer cells but not healthy cells, nimbolide keeps pancreatic cancer cells from proliferating, reducing the number of cells growing in a colony in a test tube by 80 percent, and from metastasizing, reducing the spread of pancreatic cancer cells under laboratory conditions by 70 percent.

If I Have Pancreatic Cancer, Should I Take Neem?

The simple fact about pancreatic cancer is that most people who are diagnosed with it will try just about anything to fight it. The prognosis offered by doctors is gloomy and hard to accept. About half of North Americans (and substantially higher percentages of Latin Americans and Asians) will attempt to use herbal medicines with or without the knowledge of their doctors when they are diagnosed with this disease.

If you are inclined to use herbal medicine for pancreatic cancer, neem at least has the advantage of not interfering with standard medical treatment. It acts on a different metabolic pathway in pancreatic cancer cells than most kinds of chemotherapy, and neem benefits include the facts that it reduces inflammation and fights certain kinds of infections. What we don't really know is how much of an impact it will have on the disease. At the right stage in this kind of cancer, early on, it really might help stop the spread of the disease beyond the pancreas. That doesn't mean that it would be OK to stop conventional medical treatment or that neem is enough to get the best possible result. Some oncologists are comfortable with including herbs in treatment, but no oncologist will use herbs as an exclusive treatment. 

Moreover, cancer patients should never hide their use of complementary medicine from their doctors. Suppose you really hit on the right treatment for your cancer. Don't you want your doctor to know that what you have been doing works so maybe, just maybe, some other cancer patient could also benefit? You might have to endure your doctor's skepticism, but if enough patients get good results, doctors actually do eventually pay attention. Maybe, just maybe, you will find your way into the small number of long-term survivors of pancreatic cancer with a combination of the best conventional medicine and the best complementary medicine.

What other natural medicines have potential to help in pancreatic cancer?

• The yellow-orange antioxidant curcumin, which is extracted from turmeric, may be helpful at certain stages of pancreatic cancer. As an antioxidant, curcumin works in exactly the opposite way from neem, but it also works on different pathways, so the two herbs wouldn't interfere with each other. Curcumin has been tested in Israel as a treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer in combination with the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine. When curcumin is used in combination with chemotherapy, it extends life in about 10 percent of cases. Maybe curcumin would work better if chemotherapy weren't used, but the researchers thought it would be irresponsible not to give their patients chemo because they felt conventional pharmaceutical treatment held some potential to extend life.

READ Curcumin or Cure-Cumin? Antioxidant in Turmeric Is Amazingly Useful

• Chinese herbal medicine won't cure pancreatic cancer, either, but an herbal formula known as Huangquin Tang at the Chinese herbalist's office or PHY-906 in a few herb shops can relieve nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. What this herbal combination can do is basically to help pancreatic cancer patients keep food down, but that also makes a critical difference in quality of life and survival time.