Role of Curcumin in reducing toxicity and adverse effects in locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer patients

Abstract

Abstract Background Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women, contributing to 27 % of malignant tumors, and 15% of cancer deaths in female patients globally. The conventional cancer therapeutic approach is surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy which has huge side effects. To reduce the chemotherapy associated toxicity in patients, combining natural herbal antioxidative compounds with chemotherapeutic drugs may be useful for overcoming high toxicity along with chemo-resistance as well. Herbal compound Curcumin is known to downregulate both the PI3K/Akt and NF-κB signaling pathways including several cancer associated key gene expression thereby acting as a modulator of chemo-resistance to sensitizing cancer and cancer stem cells to chemotherapeutic drugs. We, therefore, explored the role of Curcumin along with common chemotherapeutic drugs for an effective treatment of locally advanced and Stage IV breast cancer patients to assess reduction of toxicity and adverse effects. Methods Patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer patients were recruited for the study. Standard chemotherapy has been administered for 4-6 cycles. Curcumin was given as an adjuvant therapy orally 1 gm/day after breakfast and dinnerin dividing dosage. The primary endpoint of this study was to assess the adverse eventsin the breast cancer patients and the treatment outcome. Results Out of 62 patients enrolled, hormonal (ER/PR) positive patients 27, 21 TNBC and 14 Her2 positive patients were enrolled. 32 were locally advanced breast cancer (LABC patients while 30 were Stage IV patients. Results indicate that hormonal positive and Her2 positive patients have significantly better outcomes when compared with TNBC group (66.12% vs 33.87%, P = Conclusions Curcumin in combination with a standard dose of chemotherapy show less toxicity and better outcome in breast cancer.