Dr. Hirokane Takahashi, the director of Taiyou clinic
Specialist of Internal Medicine certificated by The Japanese Society of Internal Medicine
Specialist of Hematology certificated by The Japanese Society of Hematology
Adult T-cell lymphoma/leukemia (ATL) is a fetal T-cell malignancy strongly associated with human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) infection. HTLV-I is one of retroviridae, which is a class of viruses including HIV-1. HTLV-I infection causes aberrant expression of many types of genes relating to proliferation, anti-apoptosis and cell survival in the infected host T-cells. Forty to fifty years after infection of HTLV-I, disease progression of ATL occurs in 2 to 5 % of the carriers.
Previously, it was demonstrated that general status of HIV patients under HAART treatment was dramatically improved after treating with a supplemental food of pine cone extract of Pinaceae that contains SPN, a kind of lignin-polyphenol, which has a strong anti-viral effect. Thus, it was expected that SPN have a similar impact onto HTLV-I and its infected cells as well as onto HIV patients.
At my clinic, I tried treating two ATL patients with the supplement SPN. As usual, epidermal tumour of ATL is resistant against conventional chemotherapy and such kind of ATL is aggressive and poor prognosis; however, in one case, SPN reduced the size of tumour in the epidermis of a patient and the general status of him was recovered. In another case, SPN treatment kept good general status of the patient, who was in a critical condition because of the progression of proliferative leukemia of ATL, and he was cured by bone marrow transplantation. Today, he has completely recovered from the illness without any side effects belonging to the transplantation and is enjoying any social activity.
In different types of malignancies other than ATL, many patients who took SPN represented good outcomes even though the results were what their physicians UNexpected.
In one example, an elderly lady who had had abdominal dropsy resulting from peritoneal carcinomatosis at the time of diagnosis already and markedly attenuated got better soon after taking SPN and improved both appetite and general status, and she could support her own living for about 3 months. One day, however, her son took her to urban site for being in hospital and she could not access to SPN. Hence she started chemotherapy at national cancer center and passed away because of the heavy side effects of chemotherapy.
In another case, a patient, who had progressive cervical cancer with metastasis that was unable to undergo an operation and was expected that her lifetime be not so long, still keeps herself in good condition 3 years after chemotherapy with some lighter side effects because she has kept taking SPN ever since she started chemotherapy.
From ancient times, it is said that pine nuts of Pinaceae species have the effect to enhance biological activity, and actually the nuts are widely used as a beneficial food in cold places till today.
It is expected as a course of matter that the cancer patients who take SPN get better outcomes because SPN improve the ability of spontaneous recovery of them. Therefore it is important to clarify the mechanism of anti-tumour effect of SPN.
But, it is not easy to analyze the anti-cancer effect of SPN because SPN is a mixture of natural products, not like conventional anti-cancer drugs that are single compounds. Accumulation of more cases will be required.
Finally, I note the proper dose of SPN.
It is suggested that 2 to 4 tablets of SPN a day for a healthy person and more than 6 tablets a day for a patients with an advanced disease such as cancer.
In my opinion, the patients who take enzyme nutrition combined with SPN appear to get better outcomes.