What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I mention, ‘alcohol’? Do you picture yourself sitting at a bar with a drink in your hand, or maybe just simply cracking open a cold one with the boys? What if I were to tell you that the same substance found in your favourite adult beverages can be used to save lives? As surprising as it may seem, alcohol can be used to treat cancer.
Cancer is easily one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Everyone knows that when detected early, cancer can be treated with the right equipment and resources. One method of treatment is via the use of alcohol. Indeed, the use of alcohol in cancer treatment is not unfamiliar. The treatment, known as ethanol ablation, uses ethanol – a type of alcohol – to destroy crucial proteins and fatally empties the cancer cell. To help you better understand this, imagine tearing through a water balloon and draining it of water; well, that is akin to how ethanol destroys cancer cells. Today, ethanol ablation is used to treat liver cancer, and its 5-year survival rate is remarkably comparable to that of removal surgery. What makes ethanol ablation especially appealing is its surprisingly low-cost. At
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In hamsters that were treated with present-day ethanol ablation technique; i.e., pure ethanol injection, large volumes had to be used to notice positive results. Yet, only 4 out of 12 tumours disappeared by day 8. Astonishingly, hamsters treated with a comparably smaller volume of ethanol gel displayed striking results. After just 7 days, all the tumours had disappeared except one. By the eighth day, not a single tumour was left. The efficiency of a small amount of ethanol gel suggests that “enhanced ethanol ablation can be modified to treat larger tumors…by increasing the injection volume,” describes Robert Morhard and his team at Duke