The Times
Rhys Blakley
Gerry Gajadharsingh writes:
“Whilst the focus of the article is inevitably on a medication, the existing class of drug beta blockers, which essentially reduces over activity of the sympathetic/stress part of the nervous system, the interesting part is the hypothesis which suggests that calming down the sympathetic nervous system will reduce the likely hood of dormant cancer cells being reactivated.
We can measure the autonomic nervous system response i.e., the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic/relaxation nervous system via heart rate variability. There are various ways of measuring HRV, I find a particularly useful one is something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia or breathing heart wave which essentially is the measurement of heart rate variability in relation to all breathing pattern. The higher the HRV the better balance within the autonomic nervous system, essentially for most people this means calming down the stress part of the nervous system and supporting the relaxation part of the nervous system.
So, the point is you don’t necessarily have to resort to beta-blockers to calm your nervous system down, gentle relaxed breathing and finding ways to quieten the mind such as meditation can calm down the stress part of your nervous system and that will have an impact on your circulating stress hormones.
The paradox of course is that some beta-blockers can adversely affect breathing in some patients especially with conditions such as asthma using non cardio selective betablockers e.g., Propranolol (B1 and B2 receptor blockers) vs cardio selective beta blockers (B1 receptor blockers) e.g., Atenolol.”
Scientists are exploring whether existing drugs can be used to keep cancer at bay after discovering that stress hormones can reactivate the disease years after it appears to have been beaten.
Research suggests that stress hormones can set off a cascading set of immune system responses. These can result in the revival of “sleeping” cancer cells, which can lie dormant in the body for years after evading treatments such as chemotherapy. The scientists believe that drugs that dampen the hormones, known as beta blockers, could be effective in preventing tumours from returning, keeping patients in remission. This treatment is now being tested in an early-stage clinical trial.
“We believe this can be relevant to any type of cancer where the phenomenon of dormancy is an important mechanism of tumour recurrence,” Dmitry Gabrilovich, chief scientist of cancer immunology at the drugmaker AstraZeneca and one of the leaders of the study, said. “Currently, this is a very long list that includes lung, breast, colon, ovarian, prostate, and many other cancers.”
Recurrent tumours that have spread from the original site to new parts of the body are the leading cause of disease-related death among cancer patients, a recent paper reported.
The scientists in the new study, which was published yesterday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, first discovered that stress hormones such as norepinephrine reactivated dormant lung and ovarian cancer cells in mice.
Next, they looked at samples of blood serum from 80 patients who had undergone surgery to have lung tumours removed. They found that some patients had higher levels of a compound known as S100A8/A9, which is released by white blood cells when levels of stress hormones are elevated.
In the mice it had been S100A8/A9 in particular that had appeared to prompt dormant cancer cells to reawaken. The researchers also found that patients with higher levels of the compound were more likely to have experienced recurrence of their cancer 33 months after surgery.
Beta blockers may not be suitable for all patients, Dr Gabrilovich said. He believes that it may be more useful to develop medicines that target the compound. He added: “This may be the next thing in drug development . . . my dream is to have something testable in patients in a couple of years.”