Mistletoe and Bladder Cancer

Mistletoe and Bladder Cancer

 

Bladder Cancer is one of the Common Types of Cancer all over the world. In Canada, at 2020 an estimated 12,200 people will develop Bladder Cancer this year, 2600 will die from this cancer, this is according to the 2020 updated Canadian Cancer Society Bladder Cancer Statistics https://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-type/bladder/statistics/?region=on  

This article will discuss a  research on Mistletoe and Bladder Cancer. The Mistletoe is an opportunistic plant that grows on a different host plants in many areas of the world such as North America and Europe. Due to its opportunistic behavior, it can impact the growth of other plants negatively and sometimes ends their life. From that point, Mistletoe has been considered as a strong anti mitotic agent or in other words, it can potentially kill other cells including cancer cells, so it was studied for many years for patients with a different types of cancer to assess its impact on cancer growth and survival of patients with cancer. The most effective species of Mistletoe against cancer is called Viscum Album due to its richness in lectins which are considered as an anticancer agent of this plant, and this Viscum Album Species is mainly grown in North Europe and Germany.

 

In this research, 36 newly diagnosed patients with Early Non muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer were treated with a weekly intravesical (inside the bladder) infusions of Mistletoe for 6 weeks in a row. After 12 weeks from  the start of treatment (which is 6 weeks from the last infusion), a transurethral bladder biopsy was taken to assess the response to the Mistletoe treatment.

Results: All patients tolerated the intravesical infusions of the Mistletoe safely without any concerning side effects or toxicities even with the highest dose (675 mg of the plant extract), only minimal symptoms such as few patients with fever. At the end of the study as much as 55.6% of patients had complete remission (so no more tumour was found after biopsy)

 

Conclusion: This study proved that Mistletoe can be injected inside the bladder of patients with superficial Bladder Cancer with no significant side effects or toxicities, and the response rate was very promising, in the future, more studies are warranted to have more information about this intervention for people with Bladder Cancer.

 

To have more information and details about this research, you can click this link https://www.auajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1016/j.juro.2015.04.073 

 

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