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© Oxford University Press 2007.
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Chinese Folk Treatment Reveals Power of Arsenic To Treat Cancer, New Studies Under Way
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The medical uses of arsenic reach back more than 2,000 years, but only recently has Western medicine embraced its surprising rise from folk cure-all to proven cancer treatment.
The January announcement of positive results in a 6-year NCI-sponsored phase III clinical trial to treat a rare form of leukemia is merely the latest in a series of kudos for arsenic's medicinal prowess. The latest study affirms that arsenic can effectively maintain remissions in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). But some investigators hope that arsenic could go even farther and eventually replace chemotherapy as a front-line treatment for APL.
"If you have something that will take away the potential toxicity and the potential real harm of high doses of anthracycline [chemotherapy] why not do it?" said Samuel Waxman, M.D., professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a professor consultant at Shanghai Second
Arsenic and Old Communists
Beyond APL
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  J. Liu, Y. Lu, Q. Wu, R. A. Goyer, and M. P. Waalkes Mineral Arsenicals in Traditional Medicines: Orpiment, Realgar, and Arsenolite J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther., August 1, 2008; 326(2): 363 - 368. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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