In a new study, researchers found a way to allow some future cancer patients, including children with leukemia, to avoid their chemotherapy’s worst and most debilitating side effects.
They found “turning off” the inflammation that is one of the body’s natural reactions to the chemotherapy drug vincristine might reduce its accompanying pain and unpleasant symptoms.
They found the anti-inflammatory drug anakinra substantially reduced the awful nerve symptoms.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Queensland.
Anakinra is an existing rheumatoid and juvenile arthritis treatment. It is used to treat cervical, brain and lung cancers, leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.
The researchers made the discovery while studying how vincristine causes sensory nerves to function abnormally.
Neuropathy was one of the chemotherapy drug’s most unpleasant and severe side-effects, causing tingling and numbness in hands and feet, pain, and muscle weakness leading to limping.
Unfortunately these symptoms can persist long after treatment.
The only way to ease them is to lower the vincristine dose, but this lowers the treatment’s effectiveness against cancer.
The team says their new finding was specific to vincristine and anakinra, although early findings suggested anakinra may help relieve symptoms of some other chemotherapy drugs.
This discovery will flow through to patients much more quickly than if the researchers had developed a completely new drug.
This is likely to bring better treatment for kids with cancers including acute lymphoblastic leukemia, sarcoma, medulloblastoma and neuroblastoma.
One author of the study is Professor Irina Vetter.
The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
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