DOES CHEMO FOR MESO ACTUALLY WORK?
A worrying report from the BBC today that casts doubt over the efficacy of chemotherapy for mesothelioma.
A study in British medical journal, The Lancet, reports on a trial of hundreds of meso patients who experienced no benefit from their course of chemotherapy. A US expert said that a combination of drugs is more effective.
The study involved 409 patients (mostly from the UK) who were treated with the standard steroid medication and radiotherapy treatments. Some participants were also treated with chemotherapy and, apparently, they did live for slightly longer. However, the researchers say that this prolonged life could be misleading, and it did not represent statistical proof. They also said that the quality of life of the chemo patients was not improved.
Kate Law, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical trials, added: "These results showed no real benefit from adding these chemotherapy drugs compared with just treating the symptoms of the disease."
In the same issue of the magazine, Dr Nicholas Vogelzang, from the Nevada Cancer Institute, said that results from other trials using different combinations of chemotherapy drugs had been more positive.