Antitumour activity

In animal studies, Grifola frondosa (hen of the woods) taken orally stopped tumour growth (J Naturopathic Med, 1993; 4: 10-5).

Injecting lentinan, a protein free polysaccharide of Lentinula edodes (shiitake mushroom), has been shown to kill breast cancer cells in humans and animals (Excerpta Medica, 1985; 690: 138-50).

In another animal study, sarcoma (connective tissue tumour) was inhibited by 95 per cent using a polysaccharide from Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushroom) (Chem Pharm Bull, 1972; 20: 1175-80).

‘Krestin’, comprising both PSK, a polysaccharide, and PSP, a polysaccharide peptide, from the fungus Coriolus versicolor is such a successful alternative cancer treatment that it is rated among the world’s best selling cancer drugs (and among the world’s best selling drugs overall).

In a large study of hundreds of postoperative stomach and colorectal cancer patients, those treated with alternating doses of Krestin plus a standard chemotherapy had a much higher survival rate than those given the orthodox drug alone or nothing at all (Gan To Kagaku Ryoho, 1986; 13: 308-18). In addition, the Krestin patients fared significantly better after seven years (Gan To Kagaku Ryoho, 1987; 14: 2758-66).

In patients with acute leukaemia given Krestin, immune function was significantly enhanced, remission rates were higher and survival times were longer compared with those who received chemotherapy alone (Tokai J Exp Clin Med, 1981; 6: 141-6).

In another study, Krestin also prevented the lowered resistance to infection usually experienced by cancer patients exposed to the chemotherapy drug fluorouracil (Cancer Chemother Pharmacol, 1987; 20: 198- 202). Another study showed better survival times among patients given Krestin plus fluorouracil than in those receiving chemotherapy alone (Gan To Kagaku Ryoho, 1989; 16: 2563-76).

Chronic hepatitis

A protein bound polysaccharide from Lentinula edodes mycelia (LEM) has demonstrated benefit in chronic hepatitis sufferers. LEM protects the liver, improves liver function and helps produce antibodies to hepatitis B (J Beijing Med University, 1987; 19: 93-5; Gastroenterol Jpn, 1987; 22: 459-64; Kantansui, 1987; 14: 327-35).

Bronchitis and bronchial asthma

Ganoderma lucidum (reishi mushroom) has a beneficial effect in bronchial conditions by inhibiting the release of histamine, responsible for the swelling in allergic reactions. In a study of 2000 patients with chronic bronchitis, 60-90 per cent given the mushroom improved significantly, with older patients benefitting most (Chang HM, But P-H, Pharmacology and Applications of Chinese Materia Medica, vol 1, Singapore: World Scientific, 1986, pp 214-5).

HIV and AIDS

Mushrooms have also been shown to help HIV/AIDS patients improve immune function. In one patient with a low T4-cell count and symptoms of AIDS given shiitake mushroom tea (LEM) to drink (6 g/day), his T4-cell count more than doubled after two months and his symptoms greatly improved. Also, in lab studies, LEM extract was shown to inhibit the production of HIV particles by infected T4 lymphocytes while boosting immune function [Shokin Kogyo Co Ltd, European patent application EP370,673 (CL.35/84) 30 May 1990].

If you wish to take mushrooms therapeutically, always work with a knowledgeable herbalist. With shii take mushrooms, for instance, large doses of more than ten times normal can lead to immune suppression.

!AHarald Gaier

Harald Gaier is a registered osteopath, naturopath and homoeopath.

No area offers the potential for a major moneyspinner than something that will take away the pain of arthritis, a market possibly bigger than any, excluding vaccination. Such is the desperation of medicine to find a breakthrough for arthritis that they are currently experimenting with chemotherapy that was originally developed to combat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a drug so toxic that it can cause acute respiratory failure within an hour of taking it (Hoffmann-LaRoche, Rituxan product monograph, 21 June 2000).

Although non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) had firmly staked out the arthritis market as their own, there was a long list of problems with this class of drugs. Patients might enjoy relief from the pain of arthritis, but were then beset with gastrointestinal ulcers. A good number of patients with arthritis were in the situation of having to take ‘chaser’ drugs to alleviate the pain and side-effects caused by the original drugs they were taking for their condition.

Enter the COX-2 inhibitors. These are the fair-haired boys in arthritis treatment at the moment – the ‘super-aspirins’, drugs that have been marketed as a pain reliever with no strings attached. Indeed, the first two to be marketed – Celebrex and Vioxx (virtually all of these drugs have an ‘x’ incorporated into their names, making them the weirdest drug names of all time) – were, virtually overnight, the most successful drugs in medical history, snatching the mantle from Viagra.

As is usually the case in modern medicine, much of the fanfare over the COX-2s has been seriously overplayed. For one thing, as the postmarketing evidence begins pouring in, it seems that COX-2 inhibitors cause the same side-effects as their predecessors. Numerous trials show that many of these drugs can cause ulcers (BMJ, 1999; 319: 1518). Indeed, a recent Norwegian study concluded that COX-2s were actually more dangerous than NSAIDs and caused more side-effects (Tidsskr Nor Laegefor, 2002; 122: 476-80). In fact, Bextra (valdecoxib), among the latest of the COX-2s, was approved less than a year ago and has already been linked to many life-threatening skin conditions, such as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, as well as anaphylactic shock. Other drugs, such as Celebrex (celecoxib), were linked to deaths from gastrointestinal ulcers and heart problems. Studies have emerged showing that patients taking Vioxx (rofecoxib) are twice as likely to suffer a cardiovascular problem, such as a heart attack, than those given an NSAID (JAMA, 2001, 286: 954-9). Such are the questions lingering over the heart dangers with COX-2s that the Food and Drug Administration in America is considering the use of a warning.

As is so often the case with a modern ‘miracle’ drug, the hype was premature and the testing was inadequate. The COX-2 inhibitors are not super-aspirins – they are just aspirin in a more dangerous suit of clothes. If I were trying to come up with a clever drug name for this batch of beauties, I’d be inclined toward ‘Nothanx.’
Lynne McTaggart

A new research paper has found that aspirin does not offer any protection against colorectal cancer, which goes against earlier findings that suggest it can reduce the risk by up to 50 per cent.

The latest research, which involved tracking 22,000 male doctors in the US for 12 years, found there was no difference in the number of cases of colorectal cancer between those taking 325 mg aspirin on alternate days and those who took it infrequently. In all, 341 cases of cancer were diagnosed in all groups.

It had been thought that aspirin and other non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) suppressed the development of cancer cells by inhibiting an enzyme that makes resistant tumour cells.

“Clinicians should be cautioned about using salicylates or other NSAIDs for the primary prevention of colorectal cancer,” the research team from the Physicians’ Health Study concludes (Ann Intern Med, 1998; 128: 713-20).

I underwent the course of these vaccinations after being strongly advised to by the local health authority, because of the nature of my work.

I made further enquiries with my GP about whether the serum had been screened for HIV. She confirmed that it hadn’t been.

What problems would I manifest if I had HIV? A W, West Ewell…..

A:We’re so sorry to hear that you, like so many, wre given this drug without adequate information about its content. However, it’s important to put your risk into perspective. There have been no reported cases of HIV infection from the hepatitis B vaccine. Furthermore, we don’t have conclusive proof that AIDS results from HIV or indeed, from any communicable virus. Four teams of researchers recently published studies in the New England Journal of Medicine (20 February 1993) of patients with AIDS like illness who did not have HIV or any other virus. Although they did not meet many of the criteria for HIV infection risk factors, two thirds of the patients in the largest study showed AIDS defining illnesses in most cases, opportunistic infections.

In an accompanying editorial, Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health admitted that “idiopathic CD4 T lymphocytophenia [which means unexplained immune cell depletion] does not appear to be caused by anything transmissable.” Although he meant to calm the hysteria sweeping the US about whether a new virus had appeared that could also cause AIDS, we interpret these results to mean that AIDS may not be caused by any viral agent, including HIV, and that perhaps HIV is a harmless passenger in the body of many patients with AIDS or even, as French AIDS discoverer Luc Montagnier now believes, a co-factor. In other words, getting infected with HIV alone doesn’t inexorably lead to AIDS.

Remember, too, the recent results from a large study showing that early use of the anti AIDS drug AZT doesn’t help those who are HIV positive. As John Shields from Mersey Body Positive says, most of the HIV positive members of his group have been positive for 12 years and yet haven’t come down with AIDS, particularly those who change unhealthy habits.

It’s important not to contract “Fraids” that is, to become one of the worried well, which can have an adverse effect on your immune system. At the same time, the best form of protection, according to Body Positive, is to adopt an especially healthy lifestyle: plenty of sleep, a minimum amount of stress, a good supplement programme, an excellent wholefood, unadulterated diet of great variety, a happy, hopeful attitude and a concentration on others (which your work lends itself to). If you were suffering from immune deficiency, some early signs to look out for would be weight loss, loss of appetite, oral thrush, persistent fevers or flu and a general feeling of unwellness.

Journalist Tom Curtis, working with AIDS activist Blaine Elswood and Raphael Stricker, an AIDs doctor and researcher, provides the following important links (although by themselves they do not prove a connection):

1. We know that some of the early Salk vaccines, all bred on the cells from monkeys’ kidneys, were contaminated with other monkey (simian) viruses. One, the simian virus 40 (SV40), contaminated millions of people worldwide.

2. There is a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) similar to one strain of the human immuno deficiency virus (HIV-2), found in sooty mangabey monkeys from Africa.

3. HIV seems widest spread in Africa (and outside the high risk groups of male homosexuals, intravenous drug users and haemophiliacs) where SIV is endemic, making it likely that the virus shifted out of its host animal and into humans, particularly as the strain plaguing West Africa at the moment is HIV-2.

4. One polio vaccine developed by Hilary Koprowski, former head of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, was tried out on 300,000 people in central Africa in the late 1950s, where HIV is now most endemic.

5. There is evidence that some of Koprowski’s live vaccine was contaminated evidence discovered by Albert Sabin, the man whose live vaccine eventually triumphed over Koprowski’s for mass distribution.

6. The SIVvirus that is virtually identical to HIV-1, the more deadly strain in the West, has been found in chimpanzees. Although chimps weren’t used to make vaccines, they were used in vaccine tests, and may have contaminated a laboratory.

The answer to these hypotheses largely depends on the kind of monkeys used. Koprowski maintains he used Indian monkeys, which do not carry SIV, although there was a ban at the time on exports of monkeys from India. The associate who grew the vaccine is dead.

Author Curtis has prompted Dr. Robert Bohannon of Baylor College of Medicine to request samples of the seed Koprowski vaccine used in the Congo so that he can test it for the presence of SIV. Not surprisingly, Curtis’ theory has been met with hostility from medical camps like the World Health Organization, which says that finding out what caused AIDS is “irrelevant” to a cure.

There are also certain holes in the theory for instance, the fact that Koprowski’s vaccine was widely distributed in Sweden, which has not suffered an epidemic of AIDS similar to Africa’s.

Nevertheless, as Curtis sums up, whether or not his theory is proved right, the moral is about how the pressure to find a “cure” to a current plague can breed a entire new species of problem: “. . . with what we know now it’s clear there was a certain hubris involved in the rough and ready campaigns to conquer polio. There is evidence that all three pioneers used vaccines inadvertently contaminated with viruses from a species dangerously close to our own. If the Congo vaccine turns out not to be the way AIDS got started in people, it will be because medicine was lucky, not because it was infallible.”

The NSAIDs are among the most frequently prescribed drugs in the US and UK, and are mainly taken by the over 65s. They are associated with a long list of serious side effects, and some reports have linked the drug to up to 4,000 deaths in the UK alone every year.

High blood pressure (hypertension) had not been considered to be one of the adverse reactions until researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, looked at the problem from a different angle.

They studied 9,411 patients who had recently started on medication to lower blood pressure and worked out the expected ratio for those on NSAIDs against those who were not taking the drug. They discovered that 41 per cent had used NSAIDs during the previous year, and that the odds of hypertension increased among the most recent users by a ratio of 2.1.

!AJAMA, 14 September 1994.

How do you get high blood pressure? For most, there is no definite cause, although it appears to be related to diet and lifestyle. This is called ‘essential hypertension’.

However, some hypertension has a known cause, including preeclampsia, congenital heart defects, or problems with the kidneys or adrenal glands. This is called ‘secondary hypertension’, and accounts for 10 per cent of cases. Other causes of secondary hypertension are prescribed drugs such as cyclosporin, oral contraceptives, hydrocortisone, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and tricyclic antidepressants.

A major risk factor for essential hypertension is age. Blood pressure tends to gradually rise the older we get. Doctors used to think this was normal and used a rule of thumb that 100 plus a person’s age was an acceptable upper limit for blood pressure. So, a systolic pressure of 160 mmHg was acceptable for a 60-year-old. However, this is now considered outdated, and all of us are encouraged to reduce our systolic levels to 120 mmHg, whatever our age. Nevertheless, this recommendation may be tied to the vast number of antihypertensive drugs on the market, and is not universally accepted by doctors. ‘All that these new guidelines essentially accomplish is to convert 45 million healthy Americans into new patients – by creating fear’, says Dr Paul J. Rosch, clinical professor of medicine at New York Medical College.

These are not the positive results researchers had expected – they had hoped that after several years of treatment with highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART), a powerful multidrug regime, the disease would be cured.

However, it appears from recent studies conducted on patients who rigidly adhered to HAART for the previous 30 months that the HIV cells do not mutate and resist the drugs. Researchers now realise that, at the moment, taking large doses of drugs is a life-long commitment for HIV infected patients (Journal Watch, 1997; 17: 189-90).