Do we always need expensive drugs to treat cancers? The answer is no, according to a pilot study conducted on 34 colorectal cancer patients at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, which evaluated the efficacy of the safest and cheapest drugs capable of lowering the body's stress-inflammatory response to surgeries to treat cancer. Cancer patients develop stress and inflammation reactions and experience anxiety about cancer relapse before, during, and after surgery .
Therefore, the researchers determined to find whether blocking COX2 and beta-adrenergic signaling improves long-term survival in cancer patients. Researchers used commonly available blood pressure and anxiety drug, propranolol , and an anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving drug, etodolac , to treat 16 colon cancer patients for 20 days (five days before and two weeks post-surgery). Five years post-surgery , 2 (12.5%) patients in the…
