Urgent warning for breast cancer patients

Take This, Not That

Take omega-3, don’t take Paxil.

That’s today’s message for women who are fighting breast cancer.

We’ll start with omega-3…

In a new British Journal of Cancer study, a French research team notes that cells in breast tumors can be made more sensitive to chemotherapy when lipids in the membrane are enriched with DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid.

To test this claim, researchers recruited 25 breast cancer patients whose cancer had spread to other parts of the body. At this stage, prognosis is not good, so treatments are aimed at delay of death and symptom relief.

In nearly two-thirds of the subjects, cancer had spread to the liver. Expected survival time in these cases was about 14 months. After receiving a 1.8-gram DHA supplement daily for two to six months, the average survival time for the entire group was 22 months.

But this result was most impressive: Among 12 subjects who achieved the highest blood levels of DHA, average survival time was nearly three full years. That’s a lot of extra time when you’re expecting just 14 months.

Of course, we can’t assume that DHA supplementation would prompt even greater survival rates in women whose cancer had not spread beyond the breast. But for most patients there are many plusses with virtually no negatives in taking omega-3 supplements.

The dark side

As you can imagine, depression is not unusual among breast cancer patients. And of course many of these patients are also prescribed antidepressant drugs.

Unfortunately, Paxil and tamoxifen appear to be a very bad mix.

As I’ve mentioned before, tamoxifen is a powerful drug that’s commonly prescribed to help prevent the return of breast cancer after surgery to remove a tumor. But research shows that SSRI antidepressants may inhibit an enzyme that helps make tamoxifen effective.

To investigate, a team of Canadian researchers recruited more than 2,400 breast cancer patients who were taking tamoxifen and an SSRI drug.

Most of the antidepressants had no effect on cancer progression. But Paxil use was found to create a much higher risk of dying from breast cancer during the nearly two-and-a-half-year review period.

Most importantly, the longer the treatments were combined, the worse the outcome.

Patients who used Paxil for 25 percent of the time they also used tamoxifen were 24 percent more likely to die from breast cancer compared to subjects who didn’t use Paxil. But patients who took the antidepressant for 75 percent of their tamoxifen use were more than 90 percent more likely to die!

I hope you’ll forward this e-mail to friends and family so we can get this important warning out to as many tamoxifen users as possible.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson

Sources:
“Improving Outcome of Chemotherapy of Metastatic Breast Cancer by Docosahexaenoic Acid: A Phase II Trial” British Journal of Cancer, Vol. 101, No. 12, 12/8/09
“Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and Breast Cancer Mortality in Women Receiving Tamoxifen: A Population Based Cohort Study”