No Stress After Surgery Keeps the Cancer Away

Professor Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu, head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Tel Aviv is recruiting people suffering from colon cancer for a new study. This research will test several drugs that prevent negative stress response after a surgery. The Professor hopes that this will help strengthen the immune system wrecked by the cancer, and prevent new tumors.

People suffering from cancer have a very weak immune system, that the illness helps destroy even further and postoperative stress usually does not help. Because of stress hormones about half of people who have a tumor removal usually risk the cancer coming back in the same area or in other parts of the body. This new approach might just be the key to a bigger success rate in cancer surgeries.

Prof. Ben-Eliyahu and his team members showed that a functional immune system is necessary before, during and after a surgery. Stress was proven to accentuate the immune system's weakness and the developing rate of tumor metastasis. The professor says that the negative stress hormones are released before and during surgery, and that generic drugs could be used to block them.

In the trial on human volunteers, Prof. Ben-Eliyahu will administrate patients a drug cocktail, before, during and after the surgery, over a period of 20 days. He will use two drugs that are used to treat hypertension and anxiety (a beta-adrenergic antagonist) as well as inflammation and pain (a Cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor). These two medications that affect immune and stress responses will strengthen the immune system and will prevent the recurrence of cancer. The treatment was already tested in animals, and it increased survival by 300%. “In rats and mice it works with great success, really beautifully,” said the Professor.

For the clinical trial, Prof. Ben-Eliyahu is gathering volunteers (about 800 people he hopes) and funding. If the testing on human volunteers succeeds, it will open the door for better cancer treatment and higher post-surgery recovery statistics.