Abstract
Evidence-based integrative medicine therapies have been introduced to promote wellness and offset side-effects from cancer treatment. Energy medicine is an integrative medicine technique using the human biofield to promote well-being. The biofield therapy chosen for study was Therapeutic Touch (TT). Breast cancer tumors were initiated in mice by injection of metastatic 66cl4 mammary carcinoma cells. The control group received only vehicle. TT or mock treatments were performed twice a week for 10 minutes. Two experienced TT practitioners alternated treatments. At 26 days, metastasis to popliteal lymph nodes was determined by clonogenic assay. Changes in immune function were measured by analysis of serum cytokines and by fluorescent activated cells sorting (FACS) of immune cells from the spleen and lymph nodes. No significant differences were found in body weight gain or tumor size. Metastasis was significantly reduced in the TT-treated mice compared to mock-treated mice. Cancer significantly elevated eleven cytokines. TT significantly reduced IL-1-a, MIG, IL-1b, and MIP-2 to control/vehicle levels. FACS demonstrated that TT significantly reduced specific splenic lymphocyte subsets and macrophages were significantly elevated with cancer. Human biofield therapy had no significant effect on primary tumor but produced significant effects on metastasis and immune responses in a mouse breast cancer model.
Highlights
In the most comprehensive study to-date on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, approximately 40% of the U.S population has used some type of CAM in 2007 with the most common being the use of natural products that were not minerals or vitamins [1]
One mouse had 7-fold more colonies (76 colonies) than the mean. If this extreme outlier is excluded since it is greater than two standard deviations from the mean, Therapeutic Touch (TT) significantly decreased metastasis compared to the mock-treated group (Figure 2)
Macrophages and some lymphocyte groups were significantly decreased by TT, suggesting this human biofield therapy has significant effects on immune function, which may mediate the decrease in metastasis
Summary
In the most comprehensive study to-date on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, approximately 40% of the U.S population has used some type of CAM in 2007 with the most common being the use of natural products that were not minerals or vitamins [1]. It is important to determine efficacy of particular integrative medicine/complementary therapies, especially since the majority of cancer patients have been shown to use these therapies [2,3,4]. Energy medicine or human biofield therapies are a small part of integrative medicine, a recent study on cancer patients demonstrated that these patients reported the highest benefit with energy medicine compared to any other CAM therapies (p < 0.004) [3]. As a first step we undertook a cancer study in animals to remove psychosocial factors
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