"Aloe for The Treatment of Advanced Metastatic Cancer"
Worldwide attention was drawn to the possible value of aloe
after the Second World War, when skin burns of victims of the atomic bombs
on Japan were evidently successfully treated with aloe vera gel,
but you don't really know for sure until you put it to the test.
Today most radiation burns are caused
by doctors giving radiation treatments for cancer.
This can cause severe, painful, scarring skin reactions
that can interfere with the therapy, yet sadly we have yet to come up
with good prophylactic skin treatment measures
to prevent this radiation- induced skin toxicity.
Enter aloe vera gel, used on skin burns for centuries.
So a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial was performed:
aloe vera gel versus a placebo gel and no benefit was found.
After the completion of the study though,
many involved clinicians felt that the patients participating in the trial
had less skin inflammation than normal across the board
suggesting that maybe the placebo gel was helping too.
So to their credit they actually ran a second experiment
to see if aloe was better than nothing,
and once again aloe appeared to have no effect at all.
In both trials the severity scores were virtually identical,
meaning aloe vera gel simply didn't work.
What about an even larger trial, hundreds of patients randomized
to aloe vera gel or just like plain skin lotion,
not only during the radiation treatments but extending for two weeks afterwards?
And the skin lotion placebo worked even better
in terms of reducing skin peeling and pain.
And so yet again aloe failed.
And indeed, if you do a systematic review of all such studies
there is simply no evidence suggesting aloe is helpful.
Head and neck cancer patients suffer the additional burden
of radiation damage
to the lining of their mouth and throat,
and aloe didn't seem to help with that either.
OK. So aloe may not help with cancer treatment,
but how about helping with the cancer itself?
In a petri dish, aloe inhibits the proliferation
of human breast cancer cells, cervical cancer cells, and lung cancer cells.
So is aloe vera a natural cancer soother?
Unfortunately in vitro potency, meaning like petri dish studies,
often fails to translate to the clinic
because the compounds aren't bioavailable enough
to build up to test-tube-levels within the tumor in the body.
So while some studies suggest
an anti-proliferative effect on cancer cells in vitro,
evidence from clinical trials is currently lacking...until 1998.
Fifty patients with advanced untreatable cancer
treated with melatonin,
which they thought might boost anticancer immunity,
or melatonin with about 20 drops of an aloe extract twice a day,
which they made by soaking 1 part aloe leaves to 9 parts 40-proof alcohol.
And the aloe group appeared to do better,
nearly twice as likely to either have a partial response
or at least some stabilization,
and—the most important outcome—improved survival.
Here's the survival curves.
So for example, 6 months out 80% of the aloe group were still alive,
whereas more than half of the non-aloe group were dead.
The researchers conclude that melatonin and aloe may be recommended
in patients with very advanced, untreatable cancers
since it didn't seem to cause any bad side effects and seemed to help.
We don't know if the aloe would help on its own though,
and a subsequent study by the same group muddied the waters further
by adding a third component, a tincture of myrrh as well,
but the main problem with these studies is that they weren't randomized.
So if sicker patients were intentionally, or unintentionally, placed
in the non-aloe control group, that could explain the apparent aloe benefit.
The problem is that there's never been any randomized studies of aloe
for advanced cancers until now, or at least 2009, which we'll cover next.