Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission

Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.

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Probiotics for Myeloma

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I’ll go so far as to say that probiotics for myeloma patients and survivors is/are as important as any chemotherapy regimen. I say this because newly diagnosed myeloma (NDMM) patients these days can reasonably expect to live for 8-10 years depending on your age, stage, symptoms, risk, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, conventional oncology will focus on chemo, radiation and surgery to manage your MM. However, your body, immune function, gastrointestinal system, all will have to deal with wave after wave of toxicity.

Further, conventional oncology and the FDA do not learn about or understand the benefit of a therapy such as probiotics for myeloma.

I understand how and why conventional, FDA approved SOC therapy works for a rare blood cancer such as MM. But NDMM patients may not.

When I went through conventional treatments in ’94,’95 they did little to my blood cancer but leave me with short, long-term and late stage side effects. 

I often lament that “I wish I knew then what I know now.”


How can multiple myeloma patients benefit from taking probiotics?

  1. Immune System Support:
    • Probiotics can help enhance the immune system by maintaining a healthy gut microbiome. Since multiple myeloma patients often have compromised immune systems, probiotics might help by supporting gut health and potentially improving overall immune function.
  2. Reduction of Treatment Side Effects:
    • Cancer treatments, including those for multiple myeloma, can disrupt the gut microbiome and lead to gastrointestinal issues such as diarrhea and constipation. Probiotics have been shown to help mitigate these side effects in some cancer patients, which can improve their quality of life.
  3. Anti-inflammatory Effects:
    • Probiotics may exert anti-inflammatory effects, which could be beneficial since inflammation can exacerbate cancer progression. By reducing inflammation, probiotics might help in managing the symptoms and progression of multiple myeloma.
  4. Nutrient Absorption:
    • A healthy gut microbiome supported by probiotics can improve nutrient absorption. This is particularly important for multiple myeloma patients, who may suffer from malnutrition or deficiencies due to their disease or its treatment.
  5. Limited Specific Research:
    • There is limited research specifically focused on multiple myeloma and probiotics. Most studies on probiotics in cancer patients have been conducted on those with gastrointestinal cancers. Therefore, while the general benefits of probiotics are promising, more specific research is needed to establish their efficacy and safety in multiple myeloma patients.
  6. Consultation with Healthcare Providers:
    • It is crucial for multiple myeloma patients to consult with their healthcare providers before starting any probiotic regimen. Probiotics can interact with other treatments, and the overall health condition of the patient needs to be considered.

man hand holding his nutritional supplemets, healthy lifestyle background.

Just because your oncologist does not prescribe supplements such as curcumin, resveratrol, omega-3 fatty acids and probiotics for myeloma does not mean that these nutritional supplement will not add quality and quantify of life.

If you would like to learn more about evidence-based but non-conventional therapies to manage you and your MM email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com

David Emerson

  • MM Survivor
  • MM Cancer Coach
  • Director PeopleBeatingCancer

Short-Chain Fatty Acid Production by Gut Microbiota Predicts Treatment Response in Multiple Myeloma

Purpose: The gut microbiota plays important roles in health and disease. We questioned whether the gut microbiota and related metabolites are altered in monoclonal gammopathies and evaluated their potential role in multiple myeloma and its response to treatment.
Results: Significant differences in alpha- and beta diversity were present across the groups and both were lower in patients with relapse/refractory disease and higher in patients with complete remission after treatment. Differences were found in the abundance of several microbiota taxa across disease progression and in response to treatment.
Bacteria involved in SCFA production, including Prevotella, Blautia, Weissella, and Agathobacter, were more represented in the premalignant or complete remission samples, and patients with higher levels of Agathobacter showed better overall survival. Serum levels of butyrate and propionate decreased across disease progression and butyrate was positively associated with a better response. Both metabolites had antiproliferative effects in multiple myeloma cell lines.
Conclusions: We demonstrate that SCFAs metabolites and the gut microbiota associated with their production might have beneficial effects in disease evolution and response to treatment, underscoring its therapeutic potential and value as a predictor…
MM plasma cells can potentially survive in the gastrointestinal tract for long periods of time (10). The nature of the gut microbiota affects the degree of antigen stimulation of these cells and might influence mutation development and clonal evolution (10). Accordingly, strategies to modulate the microbiota with the aim of improving therapeutic response are being investigated in several clinical trials in MM (11)..
We found differences in the abundance of some gut microbiota taxa in patients after treatment. At the phylum level, patients with relapse/refractory disease had a much lower relative abundance (%) of some bacterial phyla than the other groups (Supplementary Fig. S2)…

Effect of SCFAs on tumoral cell lines

To explore the beneficial role of SCFAs, we performed in vitro assays in MM cell lines. Acetate, butyrate, and propionate efficiently inhibited cell growth in the millimolar range both in JJN3-GFP (IC50 acetate: 7.81 mmol/L, IC50 butyrate: 1.50 mmol/L, IC50 propionate: 5.10 mmol/L) and in U266-GFP (IC50 acetate: 22.52 mmol/L, IC50 butyrate: 1.28 mmol/L, IC50 propionate: 6.28 mmol/L) cell lines (Fig. 6C).

These results indicate that some gut microbiota metabolites have antiproliferative effects on myeloma cell lines. Additionally, we tested the combination of butyrate or propionate with the first-line treatment bortezomib, revealing synergic effects in both cases (Fig. 6D)

In summary, the present study strongly supports that SCFA production is associated with delayed MGUS progression to MM and a better response to therapy.

Importantly, the study of the SCFA pathways and levels revealed that butyrate and propionate were associated with the progression and a better response. Due to the low number of patients in one of the branches, we have not been able to observe significant differences. However, the metabolism of propionate could potentially have an influence on overall survival.

Further studies with a larger cohort are needed to validate this finding. The in vitro analysis in MM lines after treatment with these metabolites revealed an antiproliferative potential of these metabolites in cell lines and the combination of butyrate or propionate with bortezomib had a synergic effect which could be explored as a therapeutic option.

These observations, corroborated by two independent cohorts, are in line with previous suggestions of a protective role of these compounds, particularly butyrate (19), based on three independent studies by Jian and colleagues (15), Pianko and colleagues (22), and Shah and colleagues (23).

In the first study, Clostridium butyricum, a butyrate producer, was decreased in abundance in patients with MM.

In the second and third studies, the butyrate producer Eubacterium hallii and butyrate levels were increased in MRD-negative patients with MM. Although further validation will be necessary, our data also point to the value of SCFA producers such as Agathobacter, as possible biomarkers of disease progression and response to treatment.

In addition to the low diversity associated with poor responders, our results underscore the importance of the gut microbiota for MM evolution and its response to treatment.”

 

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