Can painful nerve pain following cancer therapy be avoided? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Neuropathy, or painful nerves, are seen in more than 40% of people who’ve been treated for cancer, a recent study reports. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says the magnitude of the problem is huge, although there is some understanding of why it occurs.

Nelson: I think it's a significant problem. There are approaches to reduce its impact. Principally use things in different doses than other things. There are also a number of approaches to try and mitigate directly the effects on nerves. It's a tough problem. The taxane chemotherapy drugs target tubules on the cell. They're the same tubules that the cancer cell when it divides into two uses to put things into both cells, but it's also the way nerves deliver, it's their supply chain. It's going to be hard to fully escape with these types of drugs.   :28

Nelson says one reason these drugs continue to be used is because they’re effective, and it’s hard to cease use of something that works. He’s hopeful that as newer therapies continue to be developed and tested, alternatives to taxanes and platinum-based drugs associated with neuropathy will be practical. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.