Mistletoe improves quality of life, offers cancer disease control, with minimal side-effects; this follows a patient beating her cancer using mistletoe, and Johns Hopkins Kimmel conducting a limited clinical trial.
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center began a Phase 1 Clinical Trial in 2015 recruiting one patient with advanced cancer and a solid tumour every 6 weeks. In total 21 patients were involved. The Trial has been supported by the NIH.
This followed a patient, Ivelisse Page, with metastatic colorectal cancer and spread to the liver, refusing orthodox chemotherapy and having mistletoe therapy instead. Luis Diaz, an associate professor and oncologist said that he was amazed by the physical improvement of the patient, their energy and their color. Since surgery on her liver, the patient has completely improved and the cancer is stable. The patient so believed in the benefits of mistletoe that the argued Johns Hopkins should be doing a proper Clinical Trial in three phases. The problem, as always, was funding.
So, the patient formed a charity ’Believe Big’ to bring mistletoe therapy to proper clinical trials in the USA.The National Institute of Health got involved. Johns Hopkins have completed Phase 1. Helixor M was used intravenously with the patients three times per week. Improved disease control and quality of life was recorded.
The findings from the small study were reported online Feb. 9 in Cancer Research Communications (1). The trial was led by Dr Channing Paller (Associate Professor of oncology) and focussed on safety. The mistletoe was well tolerated, minor side-effects of fatigue, chills and nausea were reported; all were easily manageable.
Also recorded were evidence of disease control and improved quality of life. The study lasted 15 weeks; three of the patients had tumours that decreased in size, and two went 5 months with no progression. Apparently this does not meet the official criteria for 'a partial response'. None-the-less the researchers are positive observing clear increases in immune cytokines.
“Intravenous mistletoe demonstrated manageable toxicities with disease control and improved quality of life in this group of patients, who had already received multiple cancer therapies,” says Paller, adding that additional phase II studies in combination with chemotherapy are the next step, pending additional funding.
An ideal dose of 600 mg 3 times a day intravenously was determined to be the maximum.
We have a full review on mistletoe, detailing benefits of improved tolerability of chemotherapy, lowered toxicity, and other research on improved survival - Mistletoe as a cancer treatment - Full Review
In the UK, you can find a centre that provides mistletoe IV, by injection, or in pill form HERE.
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Reference
1. Phase I Trial of Intravenous Mistletoe Extract in Advanced Cancer; Channing J Paller et al; Cancer Research Communications (2023) 3 (2): 338–346.