The Improvement Of The Quality Of Life And The Study Of Therapy Effects In Breast Cancer Patients Treated With Huaier

ObjectivesBreast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in women all over the world. With the in-depth understanding of breast cancer, people have widely accepted that breast cancer is a systemic disease. On the basis of this understanding, the treatment of breast cancer has developed into a set of comprehensive treatment system including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, endocrine therapy, biological target therapy and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatment. Huaier is a kind of TCM with anti-cancer effect. It was one of the adjuvant systemetic treatment of primary liver cancer when it came out. In the clinical application, Huaier showed its anti-live cancer effects. However the mechanisms of Huaier still remains unclear. Subsequently, Huaier started to be used in the adjuvant therapy of breast cancer and also showed its anti-cancer effects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the therapy effects of Huaier to breast cancer and whether Huaier can do help to patients’ psychological health or not. Besides, our research will also reveal the mechanisms of Huaier in treatment of breast cancer with the help of molecular biological technique.MethodsIn order to study the therapy effects of Huaier, a retrospective review of 144 breast cancer patients was carried out. Geneal clinical characteristic, doppler ultrasonograph and pathologic response were taken into consideration. A fellow-up questionnaire survey were conducted to collect information on therapy effect of Huaier, treatment after surgery, survival conditions, and so on using Karnofsky、SAS、SDS and Charlson index. Associations between Huaier treatment, Luminal subtype of breast cancer and pathologic response were investigated by chi-square test. Cox analysis was applied to estimate the survival of the groups according to surgery, adjuvant treatments, pathological features of tumor. Statistical analysis was performed with Statistical Package for Social Science software (SPSS 22.0). Besides, we first determined the inhibitory effect of Huaier to breast cancer by using MTT assay, transwell, westernbloot and xenograft mouse model.ResultsThis study has demonstrated that depression is commonly encountered in breast cancer patients. The depression score was positively correlated with the pathological feaures of tumor and negatively correlated Huaier treatment, Luminal subtype of breast cancer and so on (all P<0.05). Besides, our molecular biological results show that Huaier extract could induce autophagy and apoptosis in ER-positive breast cancer cells by suppressing the AKT/mTOR pathway.Conclusion1. The depression score was positively correlated with the pathological features of tumor and negatively correlated Huaier treatment, Luminal subtype of breast cancer.2. Patients with Huaier treatment have lower level of tumor markers.3. Huaier extract synergizes with tamoxifen to induce autophagy and apoptosis in ER-positive breast cancer cells4. Huaier could improve prognosis of breast cancers but there is no significant difference.