Role of complementary and alternative medicine in the care of patients with breast cancer: Report of the European Society of Mastology (EUSOMA) Workshop, Florence, Italy, December 2004

The role of global traditional and complementary systems of medicine in the treatment of mental health disorders

“…Thus CAM has often been defined in terms of contrast with western biomedicine, which may be referred to as allopathy, orthodox, regular, conventional, modern, mainstream or western medicine. The huge variety of CAM practices, derived from vastly different historical and philosophical traditions, are notoriously difficult to group together under a satisfactory definition 5,15,1 . The most influential definitions to date (Panel 1) focus on a few common features.…”

Complementary and alternative medicines use by Scottish women with breast cancer. What, why and the potential for drug interactions?

“…The reasons for the widespread and increasing use of CAMs, despite a lack of evidence for benefit, but with evidence from well conducted studies that various complementary therapies are ineffective or, more importantly, may have harmful effects when used in patients with cancer, are unclear [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. However, it is possible that the tacit acknowledgement /approval of CAM use in European Guidelines [34] for the treatment of breast cancer together with the holistic approach adopted by CAM practitioners, which many patients may find rewarding, may be partially responsible for this increasing usage. Two further issues of importance are the potential for herbal remedies to interact with concomitant drug therapies or to exert an unknown/adverse effect on the disease process.…”

Dietary quercetin combining intratumoral doxorubicin injection synergistically induces rejection of established breast cancer in mice

“…A recent study showed that 45% of breast cancer patients used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), including the consumption of dietary supplements utilization [21,22]. Dietary quercetin is an attractive natural compound for cancer prevention and treatment due to its beneficial anti-mutagenic and anti-proliferative effects by multiple mechanisms [10].…”