PARIS - Thalidomide, one of the pharmaceutical industry`s most nightmarish episodes, may have a second life ahead of it as a drug to help cancer victims, researchers cautiously suggest.
The immune-system suppressant was hauled off the shelves around the world in the early Sixties after it caused malformations among babies whose mothers had taken it as a morning sickness drug during pregnancy.
In a carefully monitored experiment, British doctors explored theories that thalidomide could combat a complex metabolic disorder that occurs among cancer patients, prompting them to waste away regardless of how much food and vitamin supplements are ingested.
The condition, cachexia, occurs in around 50 percent of all patients with advanced cancer and is directly to blame for around one cancer death in five.
The British team recruited 50 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer and who were suffering from cachexia. Half of the volunteers received a daily dose of thalidomide, and the other a harmless lookalike pill.
After two months, the thalidomide group was found to be stable, having lost only six grammes (a quarter of an ounce) in weight on average. Some in fact gained weight and felt better for it.
Those who took the placebo, however, lost 3.63 kilos (eight pounds) on average.
The thalidomide was "well-tolerated and effective" in this particular case, the doctors said, adding that further research would show whether the benefits could apply to other kinds of cancer. In any case, it could never be used for pregnant women.
The study was led by John Gordon of Southampton University Hospital School of Medicine in southern England. It appears on Tuesday in Gut, a journal published by the British Medical Association (BMA).
Around 10,000 children around the world were born with malformation, such as the absence of arms and legs, as a result of thalidomide.
03/08/2005 00:01 GMT