Beta Blockers May Also Help Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer

Beta Blockers May Also Help Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer.
New investigate suggests that beta blockers, medications that are employed to control blood put the screws on and heart rhythms, may also help lung cancer patients live longer. The researchers found that patients with non-small-cell lung cancer being treated with emission lived 22 percent longer if they were also taking these drugs. "These findings were the first, to our knowledge, demonstrating a survival advance associated with the use of beta blockers and diffusion therapy for lung cancer," said lead researcher Dr Daniel Gomez, an aide professor in the department of radiation oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

So "The results mean that there may be another mechanism, largely unexplored, that could potentially drop the rates of tumor spread in patients with this very aggressive disease". The story was published Jan 9, 2013 in the Annals of Oncology. For the study, Gomez's body compared the outcomes of more than 700 patients undergoing radiation therapy for lung cancer.

The investigators found that the 155 patients taking beta blockers for focus problems lived an average of almost two years, compared with an usual of 18,6 months for patients not taking these drugs. The findings held even after adjusting for other factors such as age, originate of the disease, whether or not chemotherapy was given at the same time, presence of chronic obstructive pulmonary infection and aspirin use, the researchers noted. Beta blockers also improved survival without the disease spreading to other parts of the body and survival without the disorder recurring.

Beta blockers, however, made no difference in the length of survival without the contagion progressing in the part of the lungs where it started, the study authors pointed out. How beta blockers might crawling cancer's spread isn't known. However, the researchers wager that these drugs may work by suppressing a hormone called norepinephrine, which is known to promote the spread of cancer cells.

So "Right now, we would not favour that patients take beta blockers for this purpose, until these findings can be validated by impending trials. In addition, future studies will help us to understand if the apparatus that we propose is correct, and thus if beta blockers are indeed directly affecting the aggressiveness of this cancer or if these findings are due to the activation or defence mechanism of another pathway".

For one expert, the study raises more questions than it answers. "It is unclear whether beta blockers exigency to be started before the cancer is found, or if they still have a utility once the diagnosis is made," said Dr Len Horovitz, a pulmonologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. In addition, Horovitz wonders whether other drugs that stump hormones might not fail the same purpose.

One fear is clear, however. People should not start taking beta blockers in hopes of preventing or controlling lung cancer. Horovitz did nearly he thinks trials testing whether or not beta blockers or other hormone-blocking drugs mitigate the spread of lung cancer should be done more information. Although the study found a link between beta blocker use in patients undergoing dispersal therapy and increased non-small-cell lung cancer survival, it did not turn out cause-and-effect.