A new study into the ability of mistletoe to decrease the reoccurrence of tumors in bladder cancer patients seems to show that it is as effective as the most common conventional approach, but without the side effects. But scientific opinion is divided as to whether complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a help or a hindrance in cancer treatment.The most effective conventional method of preventing tumor recurrence is adjuvant intravesical (instilled through a catheter directly into the bladder) immunotherapy with bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). This live bacteria is known to produce side effects, such as fever, blood in the urine, nausea and vomiting, joint pain and coughing. Although experts have cast about for side-effect-free immunoactive substance that is just as efficacious, they have yet to identify one. For the phase I/II clinical study published in the Journal of Urology (174(1):76-79, July 2005), researchers intravesically administered an aqueous mistletoe extract standardized to mistletoe lectin to 30 patients with superficial urothelial bladder carcinoma.
