New Cancer Drug Leaves Scientists Confused After Turning Patients’ Grey Hair Dark Again
29th July 2017
While conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy are known to make patients’ hair fall out, the new immunotherapy drugs that were being tested in this case work differently and, as such, have different side effects.
One of which the Spanish study suggests could be the restoration of hair pigment, at least in patients with lung cancer.
July 29th, 2017 at 23:30
One thing that every cancer patient eventually realizes is that you are mostly an experiment. (Rats work ok, but they don’t really have much in the way of life savings to give you for your efforts.) This is especially true if you have an uncommon cancer. Cancer treatment is largely determined by statistics, so if you get something a lot of people get, the treatments are well defined. Get something rare and it’s experiment city. M.D.Anderson has a group of doctors/researchers that control the odd cases – or at least to whatever degree the patient will let them. Sign here and we’ll try out a new biopsy needle design. Sign here and pieces of your tumor will be shared with other researchers. Let’s try a dose of this stuff that makes you sick as a dog with a dose of that stuff that slowly destroys your nerves.
When you first walk in, the staff figures you’re likely to die and they treat you as such. Survive and you are suddenly the doctor’s best friend. You made his statistics look good and you paid for his Lexus.
July 31st, 2017 at 14:41
Cancer drugs can do bizarre things sometimes. Before my mother had cancer, her hair was salt-and-pepper, with roughly equal amounts of each. The first time she had cancer and was given chemotherapy, all of the dark hair fell out, leaving her with white hair. After she stopped chemo, her hair grew back much as it had been before. Then the cancer recurred, and she went through chemo again, and this time all the white hair fell out, leaving only the dark. It was weird.