Many people take anxiety pills called benzodiazepines to help them feel calm or sleep better.
These drugs are also used a lot by people with cancer. Facing a serious illness like cancer can be stressful, and these pills can offer comfort.
But now, researchers have found that some of these drugs might affect how long cancer patients live, especially those with pancreatic cancer.
A team led by Dr. Michael Feigin at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center did a study on this. They looked at two common drugs in this group: lorazepam, which is often sold as Ativan, and alprazolam, known as Xanax. The team wanted to know if taking these drugs made any difference in how fast pancreatic cancer got worse.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest types of cancer to treat. Many people are diagnosed when the disease is already in an advanced stage. This makes treatment difficult and survival rates low. So, any new findings that can help doctors care for these patients better are important.
The results were surprising. Patients who took lorazepam (Ativan) seemed to have their cancer grow and spread faster. On the other hand, patients who took alprazolam (Xanax) had slower cancer growth. This unexpected difference raised many questions.
The team also found that nearly one in three cancer patients at their hospital had been prescribed benzodiazepines. For those with pancreatic cancer, the number was even higher—about 40%. This shows just how common these drugs are among cancer patients.
To understand why these two drugs worked so differently, researcher Abigail Cornwell dug deeper. She found that lorazepam may activate a special protein called GPR68. This protein increases inflammation inside pancreatic tumors.
Inflammation makes the cancer grow faster and become harder to treat. But alprazolam did not activate this protein. In fact, it lowered the levels of another inflammation-related molecule called IL-6.
These findings are very interesting, but the scientists say we must be careful. The study has some limits. For example, some of the testing was done using mice, and the drug doses were not the same for every human patient. Also, some lab experiments used tumors grown under the skin, which is not exactly how real pancreatic cancer behaves in the body.
So, while this study gives us some new ideas, doctors are not changing how they prescribe these drugs just yet. Dr. Feigin says more research is needed. The team is already planning a clinical trial to test these drugs further in real patients.
In the future, this research could help doctors create more personalized treatments. It may also make them think more carefully before giving certain anxiety pills to cancer patients. The goal is always to give people the best care and the best chance to survive cancer.
This new discovery shows us that even common drugs can have unexpected effects. It’s a good reminder that everything we take can play a role in our health, especially when fighting a serious illness like cancer.
If you care about cancer, please read studies about Scientists find important cause of pancreatic cancer and findings of Scientists find a big cause of liver cancer.
For more about cancer, please read studies about Research shows a surprising cause of cancer and findings of The surprising impact of anxiety drugs on pancreatic cancer survival.
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