Even in advanced breast cancer — adding herbal medicine to chemotherapy halved the risk of death

Herbal medicine is beneficial even in breast cancer that has already advanced. Today we summarize this topic through a single large-scale study that analyzed nationwide medical records (Taiwan).

To state the conclusion first: even in advanced breast cancer, patients who added herbal medicine lived clearly longer than those who did not take it.

Confirmed: even in the most difficult, advanced breast cancer, herbal medicine helps survival

A study published in 2014 in Cancer — the mainstream oncology journal issued by the American Cancer Society — addressed this question. The researchers drew on Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD), analyzing 729 patients who had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 2001 and 2010 and were prescribed a taxane-class chemotherapy agent. Because Taiwan's health insurance reimburses taxanes only for locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, a taxane prescription itself serves as a marker that identifies "advanced breast cancer."

Of these, 15.8% (115 patients) took herbal medicine alongside their treatment, and over an average follow-up of 2.8 years, 277 patients died. After adjusting for various factors, patients who combined herbal medicine had a clearly lower risk of death than those who did not. The fact that this result emerged in patients whose cancer had already spread and whose prognosis was poor makes it all the more meaningful.

The longer herbal medicine is taken, the greater the effect

This study also shows how the effect changes with how long herbal medicine was taken. Patients who took herbal medicine for 30–180 days had a 45% lower risk of death (hazard ratio 0.55, 95% confidence interval 0.33–0.90), and those who took it for more than 180 days had a 54% lower risk (hazard ratio 0.46, 95% confidence interval 0.27–0.78). There was a benefit even with short-term use, but the more steadily and longer it was continued, the lower the risk of death became.

The conclusion is clear: even in breast cancer that has already advanced, patients who added herbal medicine — and especially those who continued taking it for longer — lived longer.

Instead of standard treatment, or together with it?

It must be "together." All of the benefit in this study came from "adding" herbal medicine on top of standard chemotherapy such as taxanes. Herbal medicine does not replace standard treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or hormone therapy.

If you are receiving or about to receive chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer, we encourage you to continue your standard treatment faithfully while consulting fully with a Korean-medicine specialist to pursue a herbal prescription suited to you.