Science News,  Nov 20, 1999  by N. Seppa

Although recently developed drugs have made many cancers survivable, multiple myeloma has resisted scientists’ best efforts. The likelihood of a patient withstanding this blood-cell cancer for 5 years remains less than 1 in 3–as it has been for 3 decades.

Now, the notorious antinausea drug thalidomide is demonstrating power that outclasses standard chemotherapy against myeloma. Banned in the 1960s for causing birth defects, thalidomide more recently has been shown to cure mouth ulcers and relieve complications of leprosy (SN: 11/11/95, p. 311; SN: 8/15/98, p. 111).

Thalidomide prescribed in gradually increasing doses brought about improvements in 27 of 84 multiple myeloma patients in whom standard treatments had failed, scientists report in the Nov. 18 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.

The researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock tracked the effects of thalidomide for a year by testing patients’ blood and urine monthly for unusual proteins associated with the myeloma. After the year, 2 of the 84 patients were free of these proteins, indicating the cancer was in complete remission.

Six others showed declines in the proteins to less than a 10th of the abnormally high concentrations seen after the patients failed chemotherapy. In 19 others, the concentrations fell at times to less than three-quarters of what they had been, says coauthor Seema Singhal, an oncologist now at the University of South Carolina Cancer Center in Columbia.

Share This