Januari 30, 2017
according to the world health organization,cancer cases are expected to rise a whopping 57% worldwide in the next 20 years. you probablyknow or are related to someone who has fought cancer and you may have seen them go throughchemotherapy. but...what is it? hey guys julia here for dnews currently a diagnosis of cancer leaves patientswith three main options for treatment: surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. of the three,chemotherapy can be the most debilitating. it’s a pretty barbaric treatment. technically,chemotherapy is poison, but it's a poison that ultimately saves lives. the original chemotherapy drug was a derivativeof mustard gas. during wwii, scientists noticed
poison gas exposure shrunk the lymph nodesand along with it, it shrunk lymphoma, a malignant tumorous growth of the lymph nodes. even thoughit's a poison, it proved extremely successful in treating cancers throughout the mid 20thcentury. today, chemotherapy is used to dramaticallyimprove survival rates for breast cancer, it is the primary form of treatment for cancersof the blood, and has great success in the early stages of hodgkin's lymphoma. it’soften used before or after other treatments for other types of cancers. for example, when cancerous cells are leftbehind after surgery or radiation adjuvant chemotherapy is used, whereas neoadjuvantchemotherapy is used to shrink a tumor before
a surgery. chemotherapy works by targeting cells thatdivide rapidly, one of the hallmarks of malignant tumors and other cancers. like the chemotherapydrug, etoposide is used frequently to treat diseases like lung cancer, ewing’s sarcoma,and lymphoma. according to a study published in the journal chemistry and biology, thedrug attacks the topoisomerase ii enzyme which cancer and other rapidly dividing cells dependon to unwind dna. by inhibiting this enzyme, the cell can’t make dna as well and thusthe cell gets programed for death, which in medical speak is called apoptosis. but unfortunately, these kind of drugs don’ttarget just cancer cells, they effect other
rapidly dividing cells in the body as well.like hair follicles, which is why chemo patients often lose their hair. other common side effects, i’m sure you’veheard of include nausea and fatigue. as common as nausea is, it affects people differently,perhaps because of their expectations. a study published in the journal cancer found thatpatients who think nausea is a “very likely†side effect, experience it 5 times more oftenthan those who think it’s less likely. according to the national cancer instituteup to 96% of chemotherapy patients experience fatigue. people describe it as feeling "jetlagged all the time." chemotherapy makes people tired because it changes the endocrine system,circadian rhythms, metabolism, and serotonin
production. there is some evidence that antidepressantsand weirdly, exercise helps fight fatigue. chemotherapy can also cause diarrhea, hearingloss and even decreased sex drive. but will we one day treat cancer without chemotherapy?well, new treatments are paving the way. one study published in new england journalof medicine found that molecularly targeted drugs work just as well as chemotherapy withoutmany of the negative side effects. rather than suppressing all fast growing cells, targetedtherapy works by honing in on specific mechanisms cancer cells use to grow. basically it’slike hitting the bullseye rather than spraying the wall full of bullets. as dr. george demetri, at the dana-farbercancer institute told time, the future lies
with personalized medicine where therapiesare targeted towards an individual’s cancer. when planning a strategy to fight againsta cancerous tumor, it’s helpful to know what a tumor is. i explain more in this episoderight here?
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