UCSF Recruting Breast Cancer Patients For Herbal The...( ent is often accompanied by side effect...),Health

In the San Francisco Bay area alone, it is estimated that 64 percent of women with breast cancer use at least one type of complementary therapy to reduce the side effects of Western treatment or improve their quality of life. Tripathy said that, because so many of his patients use alternative therapies, he feels it is his duty and responsibility to learn more about such treatments by scientifically evaluating them in clinical trials.

He designed a study that will provide breast cancer patients access to herbal therapy who typically would not receive a prescription for this treatment from their oncologists.

However, in order for the trial to be effective, he said, participants will be randomized to receive either the herbal formula or a placebo so that researchers can discern which side effects, if any, are caused by the herbal therapy versus chemotherapy. In addition, this will enable researchers to get a better approximation of the herbal therapy's benefits in terms of a patient's lowered side effects.

It is a double-blind study, meaning that neither the patient nor the doctor will know who is receiving the herbal treatment or placebo. All participants will receive standard (non-herbal) supportive treatments for side effects of chemotherapy, including anti-nausea and pain medications. Women who are eligible for the study must be about to receive the commonly used regimen of Adriamycin and Cytoxan (AC) chemotherapy and have Stage I or Stage II breast cancer. Participants will begin taking the Chinese herbal formula two weeks before their first chemotherapy session. It comes in powder form, and is mixed with warm water to be taken like a tea. Each patient's progress will be followed closely over a 180-day period by a research team including
'"/>

Contact: Abby Sinnott
sinnott@itsa.ucsf.edu
415-885-7277
University of California - San Francisco
27-Oct-1998