Can baking soda cure cancer?
In the past two days, because of the news that "baking soda starved to death of cancer cells" on the official WeChat of this newspaper, the up and down calls of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University Medical College have been blasted, from the dean to the emergency department, and they have received numerous consultation calls. This is a study recently published in the famous international academic magazine eLife by the team of Professor Hu Xun from the Institute of Oncology of Zhejiang University and Professor Chao Ming from the Department of Radiological Interventions of Zhejiang No.2 University. In this study, they tried a treatment called "TILA TACE" on 40 patients with advanced liver cancer, and the effective response rate was 100%. According to preliminary statistics, the cumulative median survival time of patients has reached 3.5 years. Hu Xun: According to the tumor residual rate, in this study, the average tumor residual rate in TILA-TACE group after a single treatment was 1/6 of that in cTACE group, and the relative therapeutic effect reflected by the average tumor residual rate was improved by 80%. As soon as the news came out, it instantly caused a heated discussion on the Internet. Some people held it and some people sprayed it, while cancer patients regarded it as a lifeline, and even some patients flew directly from Sichuan to Hangzhou. This situation was unexpected by the two professors. Yesterday, our reporter interviewed two professors again, and they responded to the concerns of netizens and the debates on the Internet.
Q: How does baking soda treat cancer? Can drinking soda water treat cancer?
Chao Ming: Drinking alkaline water is really good for health. Good mineral water must be alkaline. However, does alkaline water have anti-cancer effect? This has not been studied. Can oral alkaline water fight cancer? I don't know. There is indeed a reported case abroad. A patient with renal cancer cannot undergo surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and the doctor recommended him to drink soda water. But this is an individual case. I don't know if baking soda has played a role. In our study, the treatment adopted is to directly target the blood vessels that nourish the tumor and inject sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) into the tumor instead of drinking baking soda. We always believe that this is only a preliminary study, and real science needs repeated verification. Many people called me, and the first one asked, "Is it true?" I can categorically say that our research is true.
Q: In the treatment of cancer with baking soda, apart from liver cancer, which malignant tumors are effective?
Chao Ming: There is a very strict definition in this study, which is aimed at patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Other tumors need further study. However, the principle discovered by Professor Hu's team is * * * for many solid tumors, and how to treat it needs to be explored. Our research has reported such a phenomenon in patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Metastatic and recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma is beyond the scope of this research, and I hope more scholars will participate in this research in the future.
Q: Can all patients with liver cancer try this new treatment?
Chao Ming: First of all, I hope the public can understand the fact that tumor is a systemic disease and needs comprehensive treatment. Even in our research, we need the cooperation of other departments, such as radiotherapy. Liver cancer can easily invade large blood vessels, so precise radiotherapy is needed to treat cancer thrombus. Therefore, this is not our personal success, and there are many team efforts behind. TIlA-TACE is currently aimed at the end-stage patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma, and we have not made a breakthrough. From a medical point of view, if the mass is larger than 3 cm, it is considered as the middle stage; If there is vascular invasion or extrahepatic metastasis, it belongs to advanced stage. A large number of ascites and jaundice are contraindications for this treatment.
Q: Is TILA-TACE a brand-new treatment or an improvement on the original treatment? How to evaluate the role of baking soda, is it really just a little seasoning, as some people say?
Chao Ming: Arterial catheterization chemotherapy and embolization was put forward by Japanese scholars in the 1970s, and it has been used up to now, and it is really effective. But there is a bottleneck in this treatment, and the curative effect is not high. So the two of us have been discussing how to improve the curative effect. So, there is TILA-TACE. Professor Hu's research published in 20 12 is an innovation in the thinking and mechanism of tumor treatment. Therefore, TILA-TACE has a scientific background, not an improvement, but an innovation, which is a new treatment idea put forward by China scholars.
What is the conclusion of baking soda test?
This is the clearest way to read a paper. The author put it this way: "In a small-scale controlled clinical trial, the tumor reduction rate of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) combined with arterial chemoembolization (TACE) was 100%, while that of TACE alone was 63.6%. Therefore, adding sodium bicarbonate can significantly improve the therapeutic effect of TACE." The editor of the magazine who published the paper was more cautious: "These data show that adding sodium bicarbonate during TACE treatment may have a good therapeutic effect on patients whose tumors are too large to be operated. However, a larger scale experiment is needed in the future to prove the author's conclusion. " So, in this experiment, it seems that baking soda is good. Note, however, that baking soda is a supporting role in anti-cancer and the real protagonist is arterial chemoembolization (TACE). In other words, baking soda is not "pineapple" but "Chili powder".
TACE is a common method to treat advanced liver cancer, which mainly does two things. One is to directly inject high-concentration chemotherapy drugs into the tumor through blood vessels to kill cancer cells; The second is to plug the main blood vessels that supply cancer cells with embolization, so that they lack oxygen and food and starve cancer cells. TACE works well for small tumors, but not so well for big ones. The attempt of "Zhejiang doctor" this time is aimed at the large liver cancer with poor effect. During TACE treatment, baking soda is also sent to the tumor to change the local microenvironment of the tumor and see if the TACE effect can be improved. As for why you want to use baking soda? The author has some theories, and the science behind them is too complicated, so I won't expand them. You just need to know that baking soda can't fight cancer by itself, mainly relying on chemotherapy drugs and other treatments.
How reliable is this experiment?
The results of the experiment look really good. Not only did 100% of the patients' tumors shrink, but some patients survived for more than 3 years, far exceeding the average. But this is only an early clinical trial. Because the number of patients involved is too small, it is impossible to prove how effective it is statistically, and it is impossible to know whether it can prolong the survival time of patients. This needs to be proved by subsequent larger clinical trials. The reason why we are so cautious is that a few patients look good, but there are many examples of large-scale trials failing. When the sample is too small, the conclusion is easily influenced by luck.
For example, if you want to study the musical literacy of students in Tsinghua, so you go to the school gate and arrest five people at random, it seems very random, but if you happen to meet Li Jian and Gao Xiaosong for an autumn outing back to school, you may come to the wrong conclusion: 40% of students in Tsinghua are musical geniuses! The really reliable way is to catch 1000 students at the door. With more data, you will find out the truth: in fact, most students in Tsinghua are tone-deaf. This is not to say that the results of small-scale experiments are all wrong. It is always a good thing to have a good result, which shows that this experiment is worth further trying by more patients. It is said that the next phase of clinical trials has begun to recruit, and eligible liver cancer patients should know about it. I encourage patients who don't have good treatment methods to participate in reliable clinical trials, but please remember that any clinical trial has risks. Please get information from official channels, weigh the pros and cons, and finally make your own judgment. If you decide to participate, please 100% trust and cooperate with the doctor.
Q: When can it be widely promoted?
Chao Ming: In June this year, Professor Hu and I introduced this method at the Asia-Pacific Cardiovascular International Annual Meeting. In May this year, we also introduced it at an innovation summit forum hosted by us, which is actually promotion. However, as far as our research is concerned, a large sample of randomized controlled research is needed in the follow-up. As for when it can become a mature and routine treatment project, the result will flow naturally, and we don't pursue speed.
Q: What does the effective response rate 100% mean?
Chao Ming: Medical terminology, explained to the common people, may cause misunderstanding. Simply put, the tumor responds to this treatment, and if it doesn't respond, it is ineffective. Secondly, to what extent is the reaction effective? In this regard, there are many standards. For example, the RECIST standard is mainly aimed at the effect of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. After treatment, the tumor shrinks by 50% and is considered effective.
In addition, there is EASL standard, which is also the standard adopted in this study. After embolization, it takes a long time to shrink liver cancer. EASL standard mainly depends on the necrosis rate and how much necrosis, and more than 50% necrosis is considered to be effective. In our research, the effective response rate of 40 patients 100% is true. Later, hundreds of cases were done, of course, some were ineffective, but the overall effective rate was above 90%.
Q: Is the sample size of a 40-person study too small to explain the problem?
Hu Xun: Clinical research includes large sample research and small sample research. This time, we are a small sample and single center research.
The research we have carried out is a Pilot Study, a cutting-edge research. We just played a leading role and reported such a phenomenon to everyone.
Chao Ming: Clinical research has strict criteria for inclusion and exclusion, which is definitely different from the real treatment scenario.
Q: Is TILA-TACE a brand-new treatment or an improvement on the original treatment? How to evaluate the role of baking soda, is it really just a little seasoning, as some people say?
Chao Ming: Arterial catheterization chemotherapy and embolization was put forward by Japanese scholars in the 1970s, and it has been used up to now, and it is really effective. But there is a bottleneck in this treatment, and the curative effect is not high. So the two of us have been discussing how to improve the curative effect. So, there is TILA-TACE. Professor Hu's research published in 20 12 is an innovation in the thinking and mechanism of tumor treatment. Therefore, TILA-TACE has a scientific background, not an improvement, but an innovation, which is a new treatment idea put forward by China scholars.
Hu Xun: In our research, two findings are innovative:
First, the synergistic effect of lactate anion and hydrogen ion makes tumor cells use glucose sparingly when glucose is little, enter a "dormant" state without glucose, and resume growth when glucose is available. The important role of lactate and hydrogen ions in the tolerance of tumor cells to glucose deprivation was put forward and published in the Journal of Pathology in 20 12 years.
Secondly, lactic acid dissociates into lactic acid anions and hydrogen ions, which change the metabolic pattern of tumor cells from being very wasteful to being very economical. A dual metabolic pattern of tumor cells was proposed and published in Scientific Reports in 20 14 and Oncotarget in 20 16.
Before us, Japanese researchers found that the sugar content in normal blood is 6mmol/L, but in tumors such as gastric cancer it is only 0.1mmol/L; In another study, researchers found that there was intermittent or persistent glucose deficiency in tumors. Why is the tumor still alive under such circumstances? Our research can explain it. However, it may be a long way from the real proof. Our experiments in mice show that after injecting sodium bicarbonate next to the tumor, a large area of tumor necrosis can be observed, which is in line with our findings in the laboratory. Although TILA-TACE is a treatment based on TACE, the role of baking soda is very critical, not a seasoning to adjust the taste.
Q: Are there any side effects of this treatment?
Chao Ming: According to our research, the side effects are not great and can be tolerated completely. Because it is local chemotherapy, the side effects are far less than systemic chemotherapy.