Colon Cancer and Curcumin a New Research

Colon Cancer is the Third most common type of Cancer in Canada in 2020. In this alone, almost 26,900 Canadians will be diagnosed with Colorectal Cancer, which represents 12% of all Cancer Cases in Canada in 2020. As high as 9700 Cases will die of Colorectal Cancer in Canada in 2020 which represents 12% of all Cancer Mortality that year. (2020 Canadian Cancer Society source https://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-type/colorectal/statistics/?region=on 

For advanced cases of Colorectal Cancer, the best treatment option is to start with Chemotherapy or concomitant chemoradiation Therapy (especially for Rectal/ Rectosigmoid Cancers) to achieve the best of Cytoreduction (which means downsizing the tumor size to as small as possible size to facilitate the surgical removal), which can be challenging for many patients due to the development of lots of side effects and toxicities from the Neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Nevertheless, the most significant issue here is the development of resistance to chemotherapy which can result in lack of response, and hence changing the whole treatment plan from radical and curative plan to supportive or palliative treatment only.

It is well known that, Chemotherapy is an essential toll for the fight against Colorectal Cancer Treatment, however, we should not underestimate the role of the body immune system in fighting the cancer . The immune system has certain type of cells that are capable to fighting against cancer and play an integral role in the overall cancer care.

Cancer cells secrete some chemicals that disrupt the Immune cells of the body and change them from a fighter cells to useless cells to facilitate cancer calls growth and spread. One of these Chemicals is known a TGFB (Or Transforming Growth Factor Beta) which specifically downgrades the Immune cells CD4 and CD25 making them less effective and useless and this can be a game changing process in the development of cancer resistance to treatment and cancer spread.

This article will discuss this topic: Colon Cancer and Curcumin a New Research, which was published in 2017 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5411934/ 

 

In this Research, the natural product (Curcumin) was studied on patients with an advanced Colorectal Cancer and was given during the Chemotherapy period, then after chemotherapy, surgery was done ,and the immune cells were examined before and after surgery. This Research compared two groups group who received Curcumin and a group who did not.

After surgery, the group who received Curcumin showed more preservation and integrity of the Immune cells as compared to those who did not receive Curcumin.

Conclusion: The use of the Natural agent (Curcumin) during Chemotherapy for advanced Colorectal Cancer can be very effective in improving the immune function of these patients which may be translated into better response rates or survival figures. Further research is warranted

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