Herbal wonder cures and alternative treatments remain popular in some populations. Patients view them as natural and therefore safe, but their contents and effects are often unknown and can do more harm than good. By gathering evidence-based data on these products, the patient and oncologist can discuss them in an open and objective way. This was shown for the recent rise to success of a new herbal medicine in the Middle East called “Alanda”, which was shown to interfere with traditional chemotherapy treatments.
The context
So-called “wonder cures” have always been popular among patients as they give them hope for a road to recovery on top of their conventional treatment. Physicians typically dismiss such non-conventional therapies because of the lack of proof. However, this is also a dangerous attitude. As patients believe in these products, they will continue to use them in an uncontrolled way, with potential negative health effects.
Being open to discuss these herbal supplements can also give the medical community insight into where the patients get these compounds from and which other “wonder cures” are sold there. That this is a significant issue was clear from a paper published in 2003 where 12% of patients reported purchasing (herbal) medicine online through cancer-related websites. Having a framework to evaluate the safety and efficacy of these products, and how they interact with classical, evidence-based treatments can help physicians convince patients of the risk. This would prove more effective that just dismissing them.
The nuts and bolts
How the use of herbal “wonder cures” can spread among the patient population is demonstrated by the recent example of Alanda, a shrub prevalent across the southeastern Mediterranean. Until 2013, nobody had ever associated this herb with benefits in treating cancer, but in a few months time its use went viral in the Arab-speaking communities of Israel. Not much later the rest of the country followed suit and its use spread to Arab communities worldwide. Most of these patients had heard of Alanda in an Israeli news report, which was uploaded to YouTube. The report featured a shepherd who claimed Alanda cured his cancer, which was no longer responding to traditional treatments. He decided to boil this herb and drink its extract when he saw a sick sheep miraculously heal after chewing an Alanda stalk. Other media picked up this testimonial, and other success stories soon followed, adding to its popularity.
It’s not straightforward for physicians to properly advise patients convinced by such anecdotal evidence. Especially when (pre)clinical data about the herb is not available. In a collaborative research effort between medical centers and laboratories in Israel, the safety and the effectiveness of Alanda were tested. No references to the herb were found in conventional medical literature or in historical sources. A chemical analysis of the extracts used by patients showed there were no potential toxins present, in contrast to other related plants. However, incubation with breast cancer cells revealed that the preparation had no effect. Even more, it interfered with the ability of chemotherapy medicines to kill the cancer cells and would thus be dangerous for patients to combine with their therapy.
How will this help me?
Preliminary data on safety, effectiveness and interaction with validated treatments can already be sufficient to convince patients to reconsider a specific herbal medicine. The investigation of Alanda could serve as a model for the many other “wonder cures” that are out there. Only by being open to discuss such herbal treatments and providing evidence-based information on their effects can physicians guarantee their treatments achieve the maximum effect.
Source
Exploring an herbal “wonder cure” for cancer: a multidisciplinary approach – Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology (2016)