The claims that are being made for the health benefits of Chinese herbal medicine are impressive. I am not sure that there is even a single human disease that is not alleged to be curable with the use of some Chinese herbal mixture. I find this worrying because some patients might actually believe such outrageous nonsense, particularly since Chinese researchers seem to bend over backwards to support them with science… or should I say pseudoscience?
This study was aimed at evaluating the association between mortality rate and early use of Chinese herbal products (CHPs) among patients with lung cancer. The researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study based on the National Health Insurance Research Database, Taiwan Cancer Registry, and Cause of Death Data. Patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer between 2002 and 2010 were classified as either the CHP (n = 422) or the non-CHP group (n = 2828) based on whether they used CHP within 3 months after first diagnosis of lung cancer. A Cox regression model was used to examine the hazard ratio (HR) of death for propensity score (PS) matching samples.
After PS matching, average survival time of the CHP group was significantly longer than that of the non-CHP group. The adjusted HR (0.82; 95% CI: 0.73-0.92) in the CHP group was lower than the non-CHP group. Stratified by clinical cancer stages, CHP group had longer survival time in the stage 3 subgroup. When the exposure period of CHP use was changed from 3 to 6 months, results remained similar.
The authors concluded that results indicated that patients with lung cancer who used CHP within 3 months after first diagnosis had a lower hazard of death than non-CHP users, especially for stage 3 lung cancer. Further experimental studies are needed to examine the causal relationship.
I would argue the direct opposite: further studies along these lines would be a waste of time!
I can name numerous reasons for this, for example:
- Investigating CHP as though it is one entity is nonsense. There are thousands of different CHPs; some are placebos; some are toxic; and a few might even have some health effects.
- The observed effect is almost certainly an artefact; the matching of the groups might have been sub-optimal; the CHP group differed systematically from the control group, for instance, by adhering to a healthier life-style; etc, etc.
All of this should be so obvious that it hardly deserves a mention. Why then do the authors not point it out prominently and clearly? Why did they ever embark on such a fatally flawed project? I cannot be sure, of course, … but perhaps one possible answer might be that the lead author is affiliated to a Department of Chinese Medicine?
3 Responses to Lung cancer patients live longer with Chinese herbal medicine… or don’t they?
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I’d remove the ‘might’ from ‘might believe’.
One visit to the Cancer Tutor site will frighten any intelligent person.
Even intelligent persons can become cognitively impaired when diagnosed with cancer. I was pretty calm, because previously I had obtained opinion of geneticist about me having Cowden’s disease, after that I had gone to gynecologists at the University clinic and demanded a thorough examination (because I knew that something was wrong). As to the geneticist I – I had decided to see one after I had read in my head CT a term “cavernous angioma” and searched additional information.
It’s interesting that by the 3000th day, the CHP vs. NON-CHP lines converged, according to their own data, based on the preview graph alone.