New publications by our integrative oncology researchers!

Over the past decade, researchers at the Patterson Institute for Integrative Oncology Research have teamed up with several other researchers and clinics across North America to conduct a study addressing the questions:

How do naturopathic doctors (NDs) support patients, and can naturopathic care impact survival for people with advanced cancers? 🤔

Our work is finally published in the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors Journal (CANDJ), which is now an open access journal! In summary, researchers collected data from people with late-stage breast, colorectal, ovarian, or pancreatic cancer across 12 North American clinics to try to answer these questions.

🔍With hundreds of unique recommendations, treatment plans were highly individualized; however, some core therapies were recommended to many patients across all four cancer types. Results showed that NDs commonly recommend natural health products—such as vitamin D, curcumin, Trametes versicolor, melatonin, and fish oil—as well as nutrition guidance🥦, exercise🏋️‍♀️, and parenteral therapies like intravenous vitamin C💉. Nutrition counselling followed a positive framing approach, which focuses on encouraging certain foods and eating behaviours over discouragement. The most common nutrition recommendations included increasing protein, fruit, and vegetable intake, alongside strategies to make eating behaviour changes.

This real-world research helps patients and healthcare providers understand the different types of treatments NDs use and their consistency across cancer types.

The five-year survival rates were compared with those from a US cancer registry (SEER), which served as a control group. Results showed no significant differences in survival between patients seeing NDs and those in the registry. Despite the lack of survival benefit, this doesn't mean naturopathic medicine is ineffective. The study’s observational design has many limitations and biases. More rigorous research, especially clinical trials, is needed to clarify the role of naturopathic care in advanced cancer.

🩺 In a secondary analysis, researchers explored whether the number of ND visits or specific treatments impacted survival. More intravenous vitamin C infusions were associated with higher survival odds in breast cancer (but not others), and more frequent ND visits correlated with survival in all cancer types except ovarian. However, it's important to realize the study was not designed to answer these questions; these findings are exploratory, and we cannot conclude that these factors directly improve survival.

Read more at:

Naturopathic Oncology for Advanced Cancers: Survival Outcomes from the Canadian/US Integrative Oncology Study

A Comprehensive Description of Naturopathic Care for Advanced Cancers: Outcomes from the Canadian/US Integrative Oncology Study