A cocktail using poppyseed oil, is the SOS for the people suffering from lung cancer. According to the recent study conducted in US, the cocktail is being used to target cancer cells in the liver. This will help the patients to live longer with cancer.
With respect to the American Cancer Society estimates, around 19,000 cases of liver cancer are reported every year & more than 14,000 people die from it. Liver cancer is believed to strike twice as many men as women. Also, it is the most common type of cancer. Although there are no direct causes of liver cancer, the risk factors include chronic hepatitis, hepatitis B, carcinogens, liver cirrhosis, alcoholism, and hemochromatosis, an iron overload in the liver.
The traditional treatment of liver cancer, chemotherapy, enables a patient's five year survival rate to only 13%. However the treatment using a combination of poppyseed oil and a radioactive isotope, i-131, raises the patient's survival rate from 13% to up to 70%. This treatment was pioneered in Hong Kong and Paris.
Presently, Howard Ozer, oncologist M.D., of University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City is studying this treatment. “You have to be able to deliver therapy directly into the liver" informs Dr. Ozer . This is done by inserting a catheter, threading it up and infusing the radioactive isotope. Since it is localized there, the radioactivity is released locally to the tumor. However, it is the poppyseed oil that keeps the i-131 in the liver where it releases radioactivity to the tumor, killing residual cancer cells.
This treatment requires local anesthesia & a two day hospital stay and has no long term side effects. The treatment is so far, performed only on a 81year old man with liver cancer. Dr. Ozer assures the starting of the clinical trail by the end of the year.
