A study on arsenic, led by a researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, has found that the toxic compound has a significant positive effect on the survival rate of patients with a form of leukemia.
The findings appear in the Nov. 11 issue of Blood. The research is being funded by the National Cancer Institute. Clinicians have known than arsenic trioxide can be a highly effective treatment for patients with relapsed acute promyelocytic leukemia.
What the researchers looked at is whether there is a benefit to use arsenic earlier in treatment, after first remission.
“For this study, we used arsenic as an early consolidation therapy after the initial standard treatment to essentially, as one of our first patients described, ‘seal the deal’ the first time around,” said Dr. Bayard Powell, a professor of hematology and oncology at Wake Forest Baptist.
“Not only did the leukemia rarely return in the patients who received the arsenic, those patients also live longer.”
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