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Herbal Extracts May Slow
Precancerous Prostate Condition
– Prostate Research at Columbia’s Holistic Urology Center
By Melissa Lynn Block - Article by The
Doctor’s Prescription for Healthy Living Article
 Of
course, you want to be an informed health care consumer. You read all
you can in the newspaper, in magazines, and on the Internet. You
figure that you’ll do everything in your power to stay well, and if
you come up against a specific diagnosis, you’ll try to develop a
natural treatment plan for yourself that will work alongside any
medical care you might require.
Then, one day, it happens—some symptoms and a PSA
measurement above normal levels lead to a biopsy of your prostate
gland. The biopsy reveals a precancerous condition called prostatic
intraepithelial neoplasia, or PIN. You have cells in your prostate
gland that are threatening full-scale rebellion. You don’t have
cancer, but the chances of developing cancer are high.
You do what you had planned. You go searching for
ideas about how to promote prostate health. You try to educate
yourself. And you come up against something you didn’t expect: too
much information. Reams and reams of it. Lots of books. Saw palmetto,
pygeum, antioxidants, diet changes, surgeries, watchful waiting. You’d
rather stick with natural, alternative therapies, but you can’t seem
to find any research to substantiate some of those therapies. And you
find a lot of snake-oil-type promises mixed in with what seems to be
more trustworthy advice. When you look at various products—hundreds of
them specifically for prostate health—you can’t even begin to know
which are of the best quality, manufactured to rigorous standards that
allow you to know exactly what you’re getting.
What will harm you? What will help? What’s a waste
of your hard-earned money? Your doctor tells you that there’s simply
not enough evidence in favor of or against any natural therapy to
merit its use specifically for PIN. You’ll just have to wait it out
and hope you don’t end up with cancer, right? Wrong.
The Center for Holistic Urology to the Rescue
Mainstream medicine has long complained that herbal
remedies don’t have a place in “real” medicine, because they have not
been appropriately or thoroughly researched or safety-tested in the
way drugs are. Federal regulation of drugs at least ensures that drug
products contain what their labeling says they contain, but there is
no such regulation for herbal or nutritional products. It’s buyer
beware, and since the desire for natural remedies is high these days,
a lot of supplement companies are willing to skimp (to say the least!)
on quality control. In some instances, a product doesn’t contain any
of the so-called “active ingredient” it advertises on its label—or, at
least, a much less than the amount any study has shown to help with a
health issue.
Aaron Katz, M.D., and his team of researchers at New
York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, are working to provide a strong
scientific base of support for the use of specific, standardized,
high-quality nutritional supplements in prostate cancer
chemoprevention, the slowing-down or stopping of the process whereby
healthy cells morph into cancerous cells that can multiply, spread,
and threaten your life.
The Center’s Team Players
Aaron Katz, M.D. - one of the world’s
most-respected urological surgeons, founder of the hospital’s Center
for Holistic Urology, and author of Dr. Katz’s Guide to Prostate
Health (Freedom Press).
Debra Bemis, Ph.D. - a research scientist
trained at the University of California and Cornell University, who
directs basic science research at the Center that is crucial for the
understanding of how holistic therapies work in the body.
Jillian Capodice, L.Ac. - an acupuncturist
who runs her own private practice and directs acupuncture research at
the Center for Holistic Urology, she works closely with Dr. Bemis to
investigate herbal therapies from the standpoint of basic science—a
crucial step towards clinical trials involving human beings.
Geovanni Espinosa, N.D. - a naturopathic
physician, acupuncturist, and clinical research coordinator and
co-investigator who, following graduation from the University of
Bridgeport in Connecticut did a residency in urology that began at
Washington Heights Urology (a branch of New York-Presbyterian Medical
Center) and continued at the Center for Holistic Urology under Dr.
Katz’s tutelage. He is an authority on the important issue of quality
control in the manufacture of dietary supplements.
For years, the Center for Holistic Urology has been a driving force
behind both laboratory and clinical research designed to validate the
use of natural therapies (sometimes in concert with conventional
therapies like medication, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy) for
the prevention and treatment of prostate cancer and other prostate
problems. One of their focuses in recent investigations has been a
remarkable natural anti-inflammatory called Zyflamend® (New Chapter,
Brattleboro, Vermont), a collection of herbs with strong
anti-inflammatory activity that has shown promise in slowing or even
reversing the progression of PIN into prostate cancer.
The Current Study
The Center has already completed a series of
laboratory studies where Zyflamend (a supercritically extracted
combination of ginger, turmeric, holy basil, green tea, oregano,
rosemary, barberry, and three Chinese herbs: Hu zhang, Baikal
skullcap, and Chinese goldthread) showed significant COX-inhibitory
activity. COX enzymes are involved in inflammation, which is now
believed to play an important role in PIN, prostate cancer, and the
transformation of the former to the latter.
These studies also found that
Zyflamend induces
apoptosis (selective cancer cell death) in prostate cancer cell lines
and decreases androgen receptor expression, as well as effects on
other variables within prostate cancer cells that suggest anti-cancer
effects. Drs. Katz and Bemis and Ms. Capodice then designed a clinical
study to answer the question: Does Zyflamend help to slow, stop, or
reverse the progression of PIN, as lab evidence suggests?
The phase I clinical trial is now ongoing, with 35
subjects with biopsy-proven PIN enrolled. Patients take three tablets
of Zyflamend each day, and are also taking some of the components of
Zyflamend (turmeric and ginger) separately, in addition to Zyflamend
itself. At months 6, 12, and 18 after being enrolled into the study,
each patient has another biopsy. One goal of the study is to look at
the anti-inflammatory effect of Zyflamend on the prostate, and this is
accomplished by thorough analysis of biopsy samples for molecular
markers like COX-2 and NF-kappa B. Each patient has tests of liver
function, blood coagulation, testosterone levels, and EKGs at each
follow-up visit to ensure that they are tolerating the herbs without
adverse effects. PSA (prostate specific antigen) is measured at each
visit as well. While all results are preliminary at this point, and
while the study needs to be completed and the data fully analyzed
before any hard-and-fast conclusions can be drawn, Dr. Katz can, at
this writing, report that there are no adverse effects of the herbs in
any patient, and that the preliminary results are extremely promising:
- Of 26 patients who have had at least two
follow-up visits, 13 have had a decrease in PSA; 46 percent of those
had more than a 10 percent decrease, and 27 percent had over a 50
percent decrease—a good sign that the prostate may be healing with
this potentially chemopreventive regimen.
- So far, 35 biopsies have been performed on 21
patients in the study. In these patients at high risk of developing
prostate cancer, 31 of the 35 biopsies have not developed any
cancer; 21 of the 35 biopsies have been normal, showing no PIN and
no cancer.
- Of the four patients who did develop cancer,
tumors were very small, with a Gleason score of six or less and a
good prognosis overall.
- One patient was 66 years old upon entering the
study in March of 2005, and he had multiple areas of PIN at that
time. His starting PSA was 12.2 and his most recent PSA was down to
10. All three of his biopsies (at 6, 12, and 18 months) showed no
cancer and no PIN.
The team expects to have all its biopsy results by
mid-2007.
Zyflamend: Little Risk, Much to Gain
Current research points to excessive inflammation as
a contributing or causative factor in virtually every common chronic
health condition, including heart disease, arthritis, senile dementia,
and some cancers. You might recall that a large-scale clinical trial
of a COX-2 inhibitor (Vioxx—a pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory) for
the prevention of colon cancer ended quite badly as an increased risk
of heart attacks and strokes revealed itself. That was the fault of
the extremely selective nature of the COX-2 inhibition, which set the
patients up for dangerous blood clotting. The herbal components of
Zyflamend, on the other hand, have broad-spectrum, general
anti-inflammatory action that addresses several aspects of the
inflammatory cascade.
“Zyflamend
is a wonderful anti-inflammatory product…not only for the prostate,
but as a general anti-inflammatory. I’ve used it with patients with
great results,” Dr. Espinosa told me. “Even cancer patients report
feeling better when they take it. Their aches and pains are
diminished.” Ms. Capodice uses Zyflamend in her acupuncture practice
as well, as a general anti-inflammatory.
Although not the owner of a prostate gland, this
writer is convinced, after writing and reading about this supplement
for a series of articles here, that I’ll reap long-term health
benefits from using Zyflamend daily along with a multivitamin.
Click
here for product or ordering information on Zyflamend.
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