Quality of life, immunomodulation and safety of adjuvant mistletoe treatment in patients with gastric carcinoma – a randomized, controlled pilot study

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Jürgen Eisenbraun¹  Roman Huber²  Byung-Sik Kim³  Kab-Choong Kim³  Jeong-Hwan Yook³ 

[1] Abnoba GmbH, Pforzheim, Germany;Center for Complementary Medicine, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany;Division of Stomach surgery, Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, College of Medicine, University of Ulsan, Seoul, South Korea;

关键词: Qol;    EORTC QLQ-C30;    QLQ-STO22;    5-FU;    Viscum album;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-12-172

 received in 2012-05-23, accepted in 2012-09-21,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMistletoe (Viscum album L.) extracts are widely used in complementary cancer therapy. Aim of this study was to evaluate safety and efficacy of a standardized mistletoe extract (abnobaVISCUM® Quercus, aVQ) in patients with gastric cancer.Patients and Methods32 operated gastric cancer patients (stage Ib or II) who were waiting for oral chemotherapy with the 5-FU prodrug doxifluridine were randomized 1:1 to receive additional therapy with aVQ or no additional therapy. aVQ was injected subcutaneously three times per week from postoperative day 7 to week 24 in increasing doses. EORTC QLQ-C30 and -STO22 Quality of Life questionnaire, differential blood count, liver function tests, various cytokine levels (tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, interleukin (IL)-2), CD 16+/CD56+ and CD 19+ lymphocytes were analyzed at baseline and 8, 16 and 24 weeks later.ResultsGlobal health status (p <0.01), leukocyte- and eosinophil counts (p ≤0.01) increased significantly in the treatment group compared to the control group. Diarrhea was less frequently reported (7% vs. 50%, p=0.014) in the intervention group. There was no significant treatment effect on levels of TNF-alpha, IL-2, CD16+/CD56+ and CD 19+ lymphocytes and liver function tests measured by ANOVA.ConclusionAdditional treatment with aVQ is safe and was associated with improved QoL of gastric cancer patients. ClinicalTrials.Gov Registration number NCT01401075.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Kim et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.