Common Pain Medication Fuels Cancer Growth

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Common Pain Medication Fuels Cancer Growth

_http://www.naturalnews.com/027596_pain_drugs_cancer.html_

(http://www.naturalnews.com/027596_pain_drugs_cancer.html)

 

 

Painkillers known as opiates are widely used to treat both acute and

chronic pain. Morphine, in particular, is often used to relieve the pain

experienced by cancer patients. But now comes evidence from two new studies

that

strongly indicates opiate-based painkillers actually fuel the growth and

spread of malignancies.

 

 

The research presented in Boston on November 18, 2009, at **Molecular

Targets and Cancer Therapeutics,** a joint meeting of the American Association

for Cancer Research, the National Cancer Institute, and the European

Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, advances the concept that

opiate drugs are cancer promoters. The research also explains how protecting

cancer cells from opiates may reduce cell proliferation, invasion and

migration.

 

 

The concept that opiate drugs used to help cancer patients might be

contributing to cancer recurrence developed about eight years ago from several

unrelated clinical and laboratory studies. First, a 2002 palliative care

study found patients who received spinal rather than systemic pain relief from

opiate drugs lived longer. A short time later, Jonathan Moss, professor of

anesthesiology and critical care at the University of Chicago, reported

that several cancer patients receiving a selective opiate blocker called

methylnaltrexone (MNTX) which was developed in the 1980s to treat

opiate-induced

constipation lived far longer than they were expected to. Other studies

had similar results.

 

 

**These were patients with advanced cancer and a life expectancy of one to

two months yet several lived for another five or six. It made us wonder

whether this was just a consequence of better GI function or could there

possibly be an effect on the tumors,** Moss said in a press statement.

 

 

Patrick A. Singleton, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the

University of Chicago Medical Center, along with Moss, Joe G.N. Garcia, MD,

professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, and colleagues decided to

investigate the many peripheral effects of opiates that might encourage cancer

growth and the potential benefits of blocking those effects. In laboratory

studies using both cell cultures and mice, the scientists found that

morphine did directly rev up the proliferation of tumor cells. It also

inhibited

the immune response, and promoted angiogenesis (the growth of the blood

vessels that help " feed " tumors and allow them to thrive). In the research

just presented by Singleton and colleagues, they focused on the mu opiate

receptor as a regulator of tumor growth and metastasis and they documented the

ability of MNTX to block the cancer-promoting effects of opiates on this

receptor.

 

 

Bottom line: it appears time for doctors and patients to consider all the

side effects of opiate pain relievers, including the fact they may spur

cancer to grow. Blocking the cancer-fueling ability of opiates and/or using

them for as short a time as possible -- or not at all unless absolutely

necessary -- appears to be the safest, and healthiest course of action.