Mistletoe therapy for endometrial cancer (corpus uteri cancer)

• Influence of long-term mistletoe therapy on survival time and self-regulation of patients with corpus uteri cancer – prospective, controlled cohort studies in matched-pair design

Grossarth-Maticek and Ziegler 2008 [146]

Patients and methods 

This prospective, controlled cohort study in a matched-pair design was part of a comprehensive long-term epidemiological study involving 10,226 cancer patients investigating various factors related to the course of the cancer disease. Therapy with mistletoe extracts was one of the investigated factors, since 1,668 patients reported using mistletoe extracts.

The influence of mistletoe therapy on psychosomatic self-regulation and survival time was analysed separately according to each tumour entity. The comparability of the two therapy groups (with and without mistletoe therapy) for the respective tumour entity was achieved by forming matched pairs. 

The prospective recruitment and long-term follow-up of patients with corpus uteri cancer was performed in four controlled cohort studies. In two randomised matched-pair studies, 30 patients without distant metastases and 26 patients with distant metastases were matched with regard to the prognostic factors mentioned above. Following randomisation in pairs, one patient in each pair was recommended mistletoe therapy with Iscador, which was to be administered by the treating physician. 

In two non-randomised matched-pair studies, 103 patients with corpus uteri cancer without and 95 patients with distant metastases who had all received mistletoe therapy were matched with patients without mistletoe therapy according to the same criteria.

Results

In terms of overall survival, patients with non-metastatic corpus uteri cancer in the randomised study showed a significant effect in favour of mistletoe therapy (hazard ratio, HR = 0.36, p = 0.014), while patients with metastatic corpus uteri cancer had no survival advantage as a result of mistletoe therapy (HR = 1, p = 0.99). 

The two non-randomised studies (with and without distant metastases) each showed a significant advantage in favour of mistletoe therapy (HR 0.41, p < 0.0001 and HR = 0.61, p = 0.023). The possible benefit of survival in the mistletoe group was on average more than one year.

In the mistletoe therapy group, the degree of psychosomatic self-regulation as a measure of autonomous coping in patients without metastases increased significantly after twelve months in both the randomised and the non-randomised study compared to the control group (HR = 0.40, p = 0.0012 and 0.70, p = 0.0037, respectively).

Conclusion

Mistletoe therapy has shown to prolong overall survival in patients with corpus uteri cancer. Similarly, the degree of psychosomatic self-regulation increased significantly in patients under mistletoe therapy compared to the patients who received conventional therapy only.