The Dog Cancer Survival Guide (48 page)

When I first formulated Apocaps, I thought I was designing a pill that would make dogs feel better, but not necessarily extend their lives. From my perspective as a conventional vet, botanical sources like luteolin, curcumin and apigenin (the main ingredients) could do little more than provide some palliative support for dogs with cancer. When I conducted the pilot study, I was hoping to see dogs perk up and feel better. I got what I had hoped for, and in some cases, even more.

We modeled the pilot study after the National Institute of Health’s Best Case Series, which means that strict standards were used. I ran tests (CBCs, chemistry profiles and thyroid profiles) and I took photographs or other diagnostic images before the start of the trial, at ten days, at thirty-one days, and at sixty-six days of Apocaps use. Thirty-one dogs were included. These dogs did not receive conventional treatments (no surgery, chemotherapy or radiation), either because of the cost of those treatments or because their guardians did not wish to pursue conventional treatments. During the trial, we tracked tumor size and several factors that affect life quality, including measuring the dog’s discomfort.

If you’re wondering if these were placebo-controlled, double-blind trials, the answer is no. Instead, these were historically controlled trials. In this method of control, we measure the dog’s progress against his own history. How did he do before he took Apocaps, and how did he do with Apocaps?

The saying, “experience is the best teacher,” was demonstrated during the trials. I knew from my research that luteolin, curcumin and apigenin were apoptogens – substances that can turn on apoptosis in cancer cells. In fact, a third of the dogs in the study experienced an objective response to the treatment, which means that some positive change occurred in their tumors. Some tumors shrank. Some other tumors did not reduce their size, but their growth was stopped. Some tumors disappeared completely. I was impressed that about a third of the tumors responded; relative to what I expected, it gave me great hope for Apocaps. It also caught the interest of other vets.

“We used Artemisinin, and one of our vets wanted to use Neoplasene ... I’m not sure what worked best or if it was a combination of everything that we were doing but her cardiac hemangiosarcoma that had ruptured, did solidify and start to shrink, and over three months went from she only had an hour to live to she was no longer in danger of having that hemangiosarcoma rupture.”

– Chris Shoulet, Bethesda, Maryland

The palliative effects were also obvious. During the trial, we measured dogs’ pain responses in a series of sessions, and the results were excellent. For 78% of the dogs who showed measurable signs of discomfort at the start of the trial, there was better mobility, more energy, more tails wagged, and more playtimes requested. Pain responses during physical examination went down, and guardians confirmed their dogs seemed to suffer less pain at home.

Side effects were very rare, similar to what I see in practice when people change their dog’s diet. Two dogs, or about 6%, experienced digestive upset (nausea, diarrhea or vomiting). No other adverse effects were found, after four rounds of testing on internal organ function. I could relate many stories from this exciting time, but I’m going to focus on the one that made the biggest impression on me, and convinced me that Apocaps was worth the time and effort.

Lassie
⁵
, a pit bull mix, had a history of skin hemangiosarcoma. A single tumor had been surgically removed from her belly a year earlier, but she was back with what turned out to be a tumor regrowth, or recurrence, in the the exact same spot. There was subcutaneous involvement; the tumor was rooted into the layers beneath the skin and was palpated as a stage two hemangiosarcoma. If she had surgery, followed by chemotherapy, her life expectancy was estimated to be eight to ten months. Her guardians didn’t want to use surgery again unless I could guarantee the tumor would not return, which, of course, I couldn’t. Other conventional options were also declined. I offered the Apocaps trial, and they agreed. I videotaped Lassie’s tumor and sent them home with the pills and the instructions.

When Lassie came in for a follow up appointment, six weeks later, her guardians reported she was feeling great: eating well, moving well, wagging her tail and playing. I felt her belly for the tumor, but couldn’t find it. I checked the chart in her files.
Maybe I charted this wrong,
I thought.
Maybe it is on the other side.
I felt the opposite side; still, no tumor. I reached for my video camera and found the tape from six weeks earlier. There was Lassie, with a 3.5 centimeter-wide tumor on the right side of her belly, and here, in front of me, was Lassie, with no visible tumor.

The heavy hitting apoptogens in Apocaps have all been shown to be chemotherapy and radiation therapy sensitizers, or make cancer cells more sensitive to radiation therapy and chemotherapy. In some combinations, those therapies may actually work better when luteolin, curcumin or apigenin is given at the same time.

There is so much evidence for this that Functional Nutriments, which makes Apocaps, won a quarter-million-dollar grant from the U.S. government in late 2010, to study the use of Apocaps in human cancer treatments. As of this writing, we’re planning on conducting trials to find out if Apocaps can help human patients, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, get more effect from their treatments. If the planned research bears good results, Apocaps may eventually help chemotherapy and radiation treatments to kill more cancer cells in people.

In the meantime, if you choose to include chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments in your dog’s Full Spectrum cancer care plan, you can often use Apocaps at the same time. The initial published evidence from research labs shows that the components in Apocaps may boost the efficacy of these conventional treatments, particularly for radiation and the chemotherapy drugs cisplatin, 5 FU, gemcitabine, capecitabine taxane, mitoxantrone and doxorubicin. (As with most topics in this book, additional citations, reading and references for the use of apoptogens as chemosensitizers and radiosensitizers are included in
Appendix E
.)

As always, make sure that your vet or oncologist is supervising your use of Apocaps for interactions with other drugs and supplements.