Is timing everything? Timing of Treatments for Dog Cancer
ByA brand new branch of science has been developing over the last couple of decades:
Chronotherapy.
Very simply, this means timing treatment for the best results. Say you take an antibiotic at a certain time of day. Would you be more likely to get better if you took it at 10 PM instead of 10 AM?
The answer, astonishingly, is that time does matter. And to make the matter even more mind boggling, the times of day are shared between people. Indeed, they are the same.
A study was done on an antibiotic that some may have heard of, ciprofloxacin. Cipro is gotten rid of in the urine. It turns out the body will dump much more cipro into the urine if the pill is taken at 10 PM instead of 10 AM. Check it for yourself here.
This means that if one takes the cipro pill at 10 AM, more will stay in one’s body, where it does more. This is crazy stuff folks.
This is the type of thing that can revolutionize not only cancer care for dogs, other animals, and humans, but could turn the whole of western medicine on it’s ear.
Think about it. You take your dog to the vet, and antibiotics are sent home to be given twice a day. It turns out though that maybe a given antibiotic should be given twice a day but at 3 AM and 11 PM. The clearance changes. What if the antibiotic didn’t work because it was given at the wrong time of day?
This has huge, tremendous ramification in cancer treatments. I will go a bit more into this in future posts, but in cancer care, we need every edge possible to win.
And now it turns out that timing may indeed be everything. Unfortunately this is a little known area of hard science that is deserving of huge amounts of attention but is getting very little.
One of the issues that makes human oncology and veterinary oncology distinct is that in human medicine, we go for a cure. In veterinary medicine, this is not the case. Why? Toxicity. Too much toxicity in chemo and radiation protocols to cure the dog at those doses. The doses are just too high.
But guess what?? Toxicity goes down depending on the time of day when the chemotherapy treatment is given.
Astounding.
For lovers of dogs with lymphosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, mast cell tumor, osteosarcoma, transitional cell carcinoma and others, you may be interested in this! Chemotherapy protocol toxicity can vary depending on when the drugs are given.
Less toxicity, more drug can be given, edging closer to a cure.
Stay tuned for more in this amazing area.
Dr Dressler
About the Author
Dr. Demian Dressler, DVM is known as the "dog cancer vet" and is author of Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Beyond Surgery, Chemotherapy & Radiation. Visit his blog and sign up free to get the latest information about canine cancer. Go to http://DogCancerBlog.com.
