Milk Thistle May Counter Liver Damage from Chemotherapy
Lee Swanson Research Update
A study in a recent issue of the journal Cancer suggests that milk thistle, an herb with a long history of liver support, may help reduce liver damage resulting from chemotherapy.
Researchers noted that chemotherapy drugs often cause inflammation of the liver, making it necessary to lower the dose or suspend treatment until the inflammation subsides. They noted that such interruptions in therapy can make treatment less effective.
"We found that milk thistle, compared to placebo, was more effective in reducing inflammation," said lead researcher Dr. Kara Kelly, from New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center’s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center in New York City. "If these results are confirmed, milk thistle may allow us to treat liver inflammation or prevent it from occurring, which will allow better delivery of chemotherapy drugs," she added.
For the study, Kelly’s team randomly assigned 50 children undergoing chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia to receive milk thistle or a placebo for 28 days. All the children had liver inflammation at the start of the study.
Twenty-eight days later, the children who had received milk thistle had improved liver enzymes, compared with the children who received a placebo, the researchers said.
The milk thistle group had significantly lower levels of one enzyme in particular, AST, and a trend toward lower levels of another enzyme called ALT, Kelly’s group found.
In addition, milk thistle appeared to help patients tolerate higher doses of chemotherapy. Sixty-one percent of the children receiving milk thistle needed dose reductions, compared with 72% of the children receiving placebo, but the difference is not significant, the researchers noted. Related lab experiments showed the herb did not lessen the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drugs, and Kelly thinks milk thistle might reduce liver inflammation for patients with other cancers who are taking other types of chemotherapy as well. Further research is needed, she said, to determine the appropriate dose and duration of milk thistle therapy. Her team also hopes to evaluate the herb’s ability to prevent chemo-induced liver inflammation.
Cancer Published online ahead of print.