Doczilla,
Thanks for your post. You are absolutely correct wrt the effect of environmental and cultural factors on the epidemic of chronic diseases related to obesity in particular. No question that this trend needs to be reversed. But this is not simply a matter of personal choices - availability of and affordable access to healthy food is a major problem. High fructose corn syrup, high sodium content, and low levels of antibiotics in processed foods are a major contributing factor. But the diseases (with the exception of atherosclerosis) were not what I had in mind. I should have made that clear.
What I was referring to do were the neurodegenerative diseases, the so called auto immune diseases (a misnomer IMO) like SLE, RA, etc., inflammatory bowel disease (Chron's), fibrotic diseases (COPD, Scleroderma, NASH), asthma, cancer. (I can go on but you get the point).
My thinking wrt to these diseases is that we are looking at them in the wrong way-we look at them as they manifest themselves in clinic, study them in that silo, and miss the bigger picture. When viewed at the molecular biology level a surprising observation comes to light - these diseases have a common protein that is dysregulated and that is the inflammasome. Inflammasomal dysregulation comes about as a result of a chronic injurious event (infection, hyperglycemia, hypoxia, environmental factor, etc.). Depending upon the tissue that is injured/infected disease manifests as you see it clinically. You see cancer and SLE as two different diseases, I see them as the same disease just different manifestations.
Let's take cancer as an example. I think that you would probably agree with the current thinking that each cancer is a unique disease to be managed - not cured. The treatment regimen is tailored to the particular patient, the particular cancer and will often involve surgical excision of the primary tumor followed by radiation treatment and chemotherapy both of which are designed to kill the cancerous tissue and hopefully provide a 5-year survival for the patient. The mantra is "once a cancer, always a cancer". I recall a similar mantra for ulcers and we both know that is no longer true thanks to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren.
We now know for certain that some cancers are caused by chronic infections (HPV-cervical cancer, HBV-liver cancer, H.pylori-gastric cancer, EBV-lymphoma). I know that the pro-oncogenic state is driven by inflammasome dysregulation. My hypothesis is that many, if not most, cancers have a chronic infectious etiology. If that is the case, then pharmaceutical intervention to override the pathogen dysregulation of the inflammasome will restore the innate cellular response to clear the pathogen and hence the cancer.
To test this hypothesis we treated three dogs in a pilot study with our experimental drug (an inflammasome regulator). This study was with 3 different cancers (osteosarcoma, rectal carcinoma, and lymphoma). After a 4-week course (2 treatments per week) the rectal carcinoma and the lymphoma became sterile suppurative abscesses, were treated with antibiotics (prophylactic) and surgically drained. No evidence of the cancer in either. As to the osteosarcoma, the drug had no effect. I think this was because we couldn't get drug into this poorly perfused tumor. The dogs leg was amputated and we gave a 2-week course of our drug to scavenge any metastatic cells. We are following this patient to see if there is recurrence elsewhere. We are now expanding this study to include 15 dogs with either hemangiosarcoma or lymphoma and cats with oral SCC. We are publishing the results of the pilot study and I will post it in a few weeks when its published.
As a side note, about 18 months ago I treated a 2cm fibroma on my Lab's right forepaw that she had for over a year. Same result - suppuration and gone. She has had no recurrence in 18 months. Also, the dogs in our pilot study had received aggressive chemotherapy with multiple agents for the disease with no effect. All dogs were off chemo for 1 month prior to our treatment.
Sorry for the length of this post, but I wanted to illustrate my point - we need to be thinking about diseases differently, not as they manifest themselves, but at the most basic level of molecular biology.
When we reach the stage of treating human diseases you can thank me and say you heard it here first.
